for any other reason.
While Hester and Tillman covered me, I approached slowly, gun back in my hand, but pointed down. “Stop right there.”
He did. I still couldn't see his face.
“Who are you?”
He looked up at me. “Bill Chester. You know me.”
Honest to God. Our intrepid vampire hunter. “What the hell are you doing up here?”
“Can I put my hands down?”
“Yeah, go ahead. So, what the hell are you doing up here?”
“Can't a man just take a walk in the woods?”
Tillman spoke up. “I told you to stop. I got a uniform on. You saw us down at that car, with a marked cop car. Why'd you rabbit on me?”
I thought that was a pretty good question.
“I'm not sure I have to tell you that.”
I was getting a little tired of Mr. Chester. “That your car?”
“No, it belongs to a friend of mine.”
“Your friend here, too?” I asked.
“No. I'm alone.”
“You drove over here just to take a walk up a bluff?”
“There's nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing. I can drive and walk just about anywhere I want to. I don't see any 'No Trespassing' signs.”
“That car's got an expired registration,” I said. “You just admitted to driving it here. We're going to have to charge you, and impound the vehicle.”
“What?”
“And your fleeing obvious officers will suggest to a court that you were fully aware that the registration was expired, and were trying to avoid capture.” It was a moment.
“That would be chickenshit. I am appalled!”
I just smiled. It would at least make up for my good wash pants.
“Care to tell me why you're really here?” asked Hester sweetly. “I do have some influence with these two officers.”
“You might have him start with that,” I said, indicating the edge of a dark green backpack protruding from the ffssure.
Chester stepped back, and moved as if he was going to reach for the pack. He glanced at us, to see what the reaction would be, and found himself staring down the muzzles of three handguns.
“Freeze,” said Hester. “Don't move a muscle.”
He stopped. “I was just going to hand it to you.”
“I'll get it,” said Tillman. He moved slowly past Chester, reached down, and retrieved the backpack.
A long time ago, the Supreme Court ruled that we could make searches “incidental to arrest.” In this case, that meant that we had every right to examine the contents of the backpack before we handed it back to him. Just in case there was a “weapon contained therein,” as we say.
“Look through it,” I said to Tillman, as Hester and I lowered our guns again. I stepped closer to Chester.
“I told you to steer clear of this case,” I said, “and I meant it.”
“I haven't interfered. Not once.”
I decided not to mention my suspicion that it was him who had leaked the vampire stuff to the press. Instead, I said, “You're less than half a mile from the Mansion right now, and there's nothing else on this bluff but the scene of a possible crime.”
“He's less than a quarter mile from there, Carl,” said Tillman, who probably hunted in these woods.
“I had no idea… ” said Chester, just as Tillman held up a small gray case with an LCD screen in its face and a keypad. It looked like a hand calculator.
“This is a GPS receiver, Carl,” said Tillman, “and it works.” Tillman was young, and his father owned a large, modern farm, so I took his word for it. They used them a lot these days, to place herbicides and other things with amazing accuracy.
I gave Chester a disgusted look. “Wanna try that again?”
“Is this guy a priest?” asked Tillman, holding up a crucifix that looked to be about a foot long.
“Nope,” I said. “He's a vampire hunter.”
“No shit?” said Tillman. “Way cool.”
On the way back down to the cars, with Tillman toting the pack, I asked Chester why he had tried to defy my order to stay away from the scene.
“In the first place, I was lost,” he said, without much conviction. “In the second place, I hardly think it's fair that you have patrols out just to keep me from my job.”
Aside from the fact that only a dedicated egocentric would think our patrols were meant for him, it was the first time I had heard him refer to a job.
“Just what would your job be?” I asked between mossy limestone stepping blocks.
“To bring the vampire to justice,” he replied.
“That's our job,” said Hester. “Just ours.”
“God's justice,” he said. “Not the laws. The justice of the righteous.”
“Oh,” I said, “that's just fuckin' swell.” I stumbled, and made my usual graceful recovery. “In the first place, he's probably not anywhere around here.”
“Who? The one you were all chasing?”
“Whoever it is you're looking for, Chester,” I said.
When we got to the cars, I told Tillman and Knockle to get a wrecker for Chester's car, and then escort it and him to the jail. I reiterated the traffic charge.
“Aren't you going to charge me with interference?” asked Chester.
“No. But don't push it. I'm willing to cut you some slack, because you weren't actually in contact with anybody but us. But, like I said, don't push it.”
“Of course.” He was smiling.
“Knockle,” I said, “do not give this gentleman a ride back to this area. Keep his car in Maitland as evidence, and take him directly back to his motel over in Wisconsin, as soon as he posts bail.” I paused. “And tell Harry that he's over there, and what happened.”
“You bet, Carl. Hey, too bad about those pants. You looked pretty good before you went up the hill.”
NINETEEN
Monday, October 9, 2000
13:21
When we finally got headed up to the Mansion again, Hester and I tried to come up with a game plan. To begin with, we wanted to know what Edie's five housemates knew about who had been upstairs when we went to the third floor. We were virtually certain that it was this Peel, but we needed to be sure. It was apparent that he'd been up there a while, possibly since Edie's murder. Had they known? I was willing to bet that at least some of them had. So was Hester.
We were pretty sure that the unknown called Peel had killed Edie, probably killed Baumhagen, and had been the window peeker at Alicia Meyer's. It looked like we were going to have to find out about Peel from the group at the house, though, since Jessica Hunley had split too soon to be interviewed. It was a case where, the more we knew about Peel, the more we'd probably know about the why and where of the killings.
We also wanted to determine two things about the movement of Edie's body. First, we needed to make sense out of the bloodstains. Both the stains on the carpet and those on the servants' stair had been explained by the action of setting down Edie's body in the body bag. Whoever was moving it needed either a rest, or a way to
