Canady nodded. “Eloise Dryer. A few petty thefts, soliciting. She’s known in a few of the local clubs, but her address is listed as a Houston hole-in-the-wall.”
“So she was a prostitute?” Mark said.
“Most of the time,” Canady told him.
Mark was inspecting the corpse’s neck.
“Decapitated with an ax,” Mordock told him. “Postmortem. But it was one clean swipe. I’m willing to bet many a man executed on the block would have given a lot to be killed with such a clean stroke.”
“But she
Mordock swept indicated the cut. “Bloodless,” he said.
The cop was silent. His face gave away nothing.
“She might have been killed as part of some ritual,” Doc Mordock said. “God knows, there are enough kooks out there.” He stared at Mark. “And I don’t mean just in New Orleans. Hell, I was called out to work a case in the back woods of the Midwest, the heart of America, and what those fellows were up to made hardened cops puke. But, yeah, I’ve seen the mark. Right on the jugular. She was drained like a slaughtered hog.”
“That won’t be in the press releases,” Canady said and looked warningly at Mark.
Mark shrugged. “I don’t write press releases.”
“But you do write.”
“I won’t be writing about this.”
Apparently that satisfied Canady. “Thanks, Mordock. Put anything else you can think of in your report and give it to me as soon as you can. You still don’t know where she went into the river?”
“Tech forensics are working on it, ebb and flow, all that,” Mordock told him. “But she hasn’t been dead that long. With the current and the river life, well, a body goes to hell pretty quickly when it’s in the water. But here’s something interesting—whoever tossed her didn’t really care whether or not she was found. She wasn’t weighted down. She was just dumped in the water.”
Canady thanked the ME again and turned to exit the autopsy room. Mark followed him.
In the hallway, Canady stripped off his gloves, staring at Mark. “Did you get what you were after?”
“Yes. Did you?” Mark, too, stripped off his autopsy-room paraphernalia.
Canady studied him. “Not just one vampire but lots of them, eh?”
Mark said cleared his throat. “She was used for some kind of a blood rite.”
When Sean didn’t respond, Mark went on.
“Every cult has some kind of leader, a grand priest, whatever,” Mark said, studying Canady. “I get the impression you’ve dealt with cults before. That you know what I’m talking about.”
“Come in tomorrow. You can have a sketch artist draw up a likeness of this man Stephan for me.”
“Thanks,” Mark said, then hesitated. Canady seemed to be a decent guy treating him with such apparent respect. But he was afraid for the man, as well. “The thing is…okay, these guys really think they
Canady grinned. “My cops won’t know they need to stake the guy, is that it?”
He didn’t know if Canady was mocking him or not.
“Yeah, something like that,” he said.
“I’ll take care of it. Come by the station tomorrow, Mr. Davidson.”
“Thank you. Um, Lieutenant?”
“Yeah?”
“They may not all be men.”
“Pardon?”
“Vampires. They come in both sexes.”
“Gotcha,” Canady said. “Tomorrow.”
Mark hesitated. “Like I said before, he’s hiding out somewhere. He can move about by day, but it’s a better time for him to rest.”
“I’ve warned local law enforcement to be on the lookout,” Sean told him. “And not just in this parish.”
“Oh? Great. Just so long as they understand that they could really be in danger.”
”I know my business,” Canady told him.
“Right. Well, thanks.”
As soon as Mark left the morgue, he hurried back to the bed and breakfast. As he pulled into the lot, he saw that Deanna and Lauren, wearing bathing suits and carrying bags that he assumed held lotions and magazines,
