have died as Matisak's final victim if Otto had waited for papers to be served. As a result none of the evidence so carefully gathered at Gamble's house by Brewer was admissible, either. The prosecutors could find no way to get this information before the jury.
This made the hair, fiber, blood and DNA evidence trebly important. Matisak was prosecuted not for killing Melanie Trent, Candy Copeland, Tommy Fowler or his many other typical victims, but for murdering Gamble, Maurice Lowenthal, Captain Kaseem, and for returning fire and killing Otto Boutine. He was convicted on two counts of murder and one count of manslaughter. Despite the fact the FBI evidence pointed to Matisak as the Chicago vampire and certain items found at Lowenthal's, such as the spigot and the designs and patent papers in his lockbox, also pointed to Matisak as the serial killer, he was acquitted of the charges of these heinous acts on the grounds of reasonable doubt and his insanity plea.
Jessica now stood before the man's cell.
She could not believe that she had made it this far. Her crutches were pinching at her underarms, and she perspired badly.
The door swung silently on an inward hinge, opening on a serving area. Matisak received his food through a tray that opened outward and moved inward electronically. At no time did a guard have to put his hand into the cell. A single chair stood in the ante-area outside the cell. This area, along with the cell itself, and the creature that stood in it, staring wide-eyed back at her, gave her the impression of a zoo, except that there were no bars here, only a thick, Plexiglas divider between them.
Matisak looked like a pathetic little man inside his cloistered, white cell behind the glass that separated him from the rest of the world. He looked like a specimen in a laboratory to be studied.
The guard pointed to an intercom in the wall beside the chair.
“ You talk through there,” he said.
Matisak stared at her as if she were the bug behind the glass, his blue crystal eyes never leaving her. She fought her way into the hard chair from her stilts with as much grace as she could muster, found a good place for the crutches to be leaned and then she fished in her purse for a number of items. She tried to avoid his gaze as she prepared for the interview.
As she did so, she looked into the bottom of her purse, thought about a false bottom there where she had once concealed a gun and carried it into a courtroom. The false bottom was still there. She wondered if the glass between them was bulletproof, guessing that the state would not foot the bill for such an expense. No one expected someone to come in with the intention of murdering an inmate. Perhaps the glass would deflect the bullet, however, causing her only to injure him. It might take two, three shots.
She lifted out the pad and pencil she had brought, and below this, she fished for the tape recorder.?
THIRTY-THREE
She showed him the tape recorder. It was her stipulation that she would come only if he would allow it. She said nothing to him, not wishing to initiate anything with Matisak. Rather, she spoke into the microphone her intentions as he leered out at her, his dark blue eyes like crystals, the only feature about him that might be called redeeming, and yet they were filled with a kind of unfathomable mad light.
“ I knew you'd come… couldn't help yourself,” he was saying as she pressed the go button on the recorder.
“ Let the record show that on this day, August 13, 1992, prisoner AK2115 of the Pennsylvania Federal Penitentiary at Stony Meadow, Matthew Matisak, here on three counts each of homicide-”
“ Never mind all that, Dr. Coran.”
“- and serving two life terms consecutively-”
“ I understand your father was also a doctor, a coroner, in fact, like you.”
“- had indicated a wish to talk openly with agent Jessica Coran, also Dr. Coran, Chief Medical Examiner, Division-”
“ He was a good man, your father, wasn't he?”
“- that said prisoner has agreed to this taping. Say it now!”
“ I've read one of his books. Kind of obtuse writing, but very inform-”
“ Say it, damn you!”
“ All right… all right, I agree to this taping.” 321 “Now, will you tell me what it is you wish to discuss?”
“ You.”
“ No, no, we are not here to discuss me, Mr. Matisak. If that is all you wish…” she started to get up and ring for the guard.
“ No, no! Don't go!” His voice was filled with a pitiable sob that seemed to her rehearsed. “I meant only to ask… how you are.”
“ How I am,” she repeated, almost laughing at the irony of this man's asking her how she was. “You bastard.”
He stared at her, his eyes riveting hers. “I fully understand your hatred for me.”
“ Good. Then we know where we stand with each other. Now, shall we continue with this… this interview?”
“ Yes.”
“ Are you prepared to talk seriously?”
“ Yes.”
“ All right. Why? Why did you ask to speak to me?”
“ To… to first say that I… I meant… At the time, I was not in control of my… my blood craving. The doctors here understand that; they understand my physical need was quite real.”
Her jaw tightened. She knew he was just toying with her again.
“ And maybe… maybe one day I'll be a free man again… cured, on proper medication for my addiction. It was… is an addiction, you know.”
“ No one can cure you of what you are, Matisak. No one can. They can feed you the blood of an ox if that helps your cravings; they can ply you with proteins and hormones and medications of all sorts, but you and I know that if you had the opportunity today to do to me what you did-”
“ No, never… never again.”
She realized he was going for the model prisoner, the one out of thousands the system could help; she realized he was very adept at it. “You're incurably insane, Matisak.”
“ I'll be up for parole in twenty years. You'll change your mind toward me by then… especially if I help you.”
“ Help me?”
“ Yes, help you.”
“ There's nothing you can do for me.”
“ The FBI, then.”
“ You don't give a damn about me or the FBI, and if it had been up to me you would not be here now; you would have been dead of electrocution.”
“ The FBI wants to know why,” he said with just the trace of a grin.
She stared across the whiteness at him. The room became insufferable. He was insufferable. For a moment, she feared that the Plexiglas was not between them, and that she had been fooled into being here and that he was about to leap across the chasm between them and go for her throat. The burning whiteness of the place saw her reach to her purse and bring up the gun, which she aimed. He stood there frozen, wide-eyed, expecting the bullet aimed at his brain. She squeezed the trigger slowly, enjoying the moment, savoring the image of his brain splattering onto the white wall. She fired in her daydream and his entire body flailed and splatted against the wall of his cell, his vampire's teeth bared, in a death grimace, and she felt an overwhelming feeling of closure, that it was finally over. Then she looked up at the real Matisak in the real cell and found him looking quizzically at her, her dream over.
She knew what the agency wanted; she knew what Otto would want of her. She said calmly, “Let's get to the
