was invited to talk to the detectives.
I turned back to Olaf and Bernardo. “Okay, we’ll check into the Persian angle later, but right now I have another question. Why would they kill them in such a way as to destroy the chance to feed on their blood?”
“Maybe their master didn’t like the taste of men,” Olaf said.
“What?” I asked.
“Their master’s victim of preference is strippers, mostly female, correct?” Olaf said.
“Yeah.”
He leaned in and whispered so that only I and Bernardo could hear. “I have simply killed men, cleanly, so that I could take my time with the women. Maybe it is the same for this master vampire. He takes no pleasure from feeding on men.”
“He killed a male stripper in St. Louis,” I said.
“But was he like these men, trained, a soldier?”
I pictured the body in my mind, and because it had been the only male victim, I could see him fairly clearly. “He was tall, but thin, not that muscular, more… effeminate, I guess.”
“He likes his victims to be soft; the men killed here were not soft.”
“Okay,” Bernardo said, “didn’t it just creep you out that he talked about killing men so he could take his time with the women? Am I the only one who found that disturbing?”
I looked at Olaf, and we had a moment of a look between us, then we both looked at Bernardo. I said, “I know what Otto is and what he does. Frankly, comments like he just made are one of the few reasons I’m glad he’s here. I mean, you have to admit he’s got a unique insight into the whole serial killer mentality.”
“And you’re calm about it?” Bernardo asked.
I shrugged and looked back at Olaf, who looked at me, so calm he looked bored. “We’re doing our jobs.”
Bernardo shook his head. “You are both weird as hell, you do know that, right?”
“You know, you might want to keep your voice down, Bernardo,” Edward said. He was back from talking to the detectives and Sheriff Shaw, who had finally joined us. They were still ignoring the rest of us. Somehow I wasn’t hurt that Shaw didn’t want to talk to me.
“Sorry,” Bernardo said.
“They’re going to give us access to the forensics: pictures, video, the stuff they bagged and labeled.”
“I might learn more from the photos and film,” Olaf said.
“They’re hoping we all will,” Edward said.
“Just let me see the pictures and video,” I said.
“I just want something to shoot,” Bernardo said.
“You know, life must be simpler for you,” I said.
Bernardo gave me a dirty look. “You’re just cranky because we’ve been here for hours and we don’t know anything that will help us find this bastard.”
“We know it is similar to the Persian sorcerer I met in the Sandbox,” Olaf said.
“I know it would be weird, and too coincidental for real life, but could it be the same sorcerer with a slightly different spell, or whatever?” I asked.
“Not possible,” Olaf said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“The sorcerer was not bulletproof.”
“So he’s dead,” I said.
Olaf nodded.
“Well, if we can trace someone in this country who plays with Persian magic, then we need to find someone who went missing from his life.”
“What do you mean?” Bernardo asked.
“Someone who knows this type of magic and has suddenly vanished. Someone from work, a wife or family member, whatever, someone who’s been reported missing. Then we might be looking for someone who was recently made into a vampire,” I asked.
“Why?” Olaf asked.
“Because if they’d had this kind of magic in St. Louis or New Orleans or Pittsburgh, they would have used it. This is a complete change in how they kill. If they didn’t have missing strippers who fit the original MO, which is what got the warrant of execution revived, then I would say it was someone signing Vittorio’s name to the note on the wall and the note that came to my office, but not him.”
“It could still be two different crimes,” Edward said.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe Vittorio is killing strippers in Vegas, but that doesn’t mean that our sorcerer and the people who killed these operators are actually Vittorio’s vampires. They went in standard op for vampire hunts, during the day.”
“I know that with SWAT technology they usually go in at night for human bad guys, but vampires are daylight hunts if possible,” I said.
“They went in during the day, Anita. The hovering magic, or whatever, killed three of them, and either that sorcerer or something else put the rest in some sort of sleep.”
“I’ve never heard of anything like that,” I said.
“No one has,” he said.
“But if it was daylight,” Bernardo said, “who wrote the note in their blood? Who took the head and mailed it to you? It was daylight and there are windows in here that aren’t covered. The only reason the cops are saying vampires is because Vittorio’s name is signed, and this was an old lair of the vampires.”
“Are you saying someone has framed Vittorio and his vamps for this?” I asked.
Bernardo shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Fuck, I don’t know whether to hope you’re right or hope you’re wrong. If you’re right, then we have Vittorio to find before he kills another stripper, and some crazy sorcerer who’s trying to blame vampires for this crime. Were there fang marks on the dead?”
“No one’s said,” Edward said.
“Don’t tell me,” Bernardo said. “We get to go to the morgue and look at the bodies?”
“Are you afraid?” Olaf asked.
Bernardo gave him an unfriendly look that didn’t even faze the other man. “No, I’d just rather not go.”
“You are afraid,” Olaf said.
“Stop it,” Edward said, “both of you. We’ll go look at the bodies. Though, Otto, you could start calling around about the Persian angle. You are the only one of us who’s seen something similar.”
“No, I will go to the morgue with”-he looked at me-“Anita. But I will call the local university from the truck and see if they have the expert we need.”
“We’re all going to the coroner’s,” Edward said.
“Otto just wants to watch me poke around in the bodies,” I said.
“No,” Olaf said, “I want to help you do it.”
In that instant I wanted to say that I’d just sit this one out. I’d just look at the pictures and the video and that would be good enough. I did not want to go to the morgue and look at the recently dead, especially with this much blood on the ground. It was going to be pretty gruesome, but more than that I did not want to have Olaf help me with the bodies. He’d enjoy it. But the bodies were part of the crime scene. They were full of clues. I had to see if I could find anything to help us catch whoever had done this. Whether it was Vittorio with a new sorcerer friend, or someone else, they needed to be stopped. How far was I willing to go to stop them? All the way to the morgue with our very own pet serial killer. Sometimes the things I do for my job worry me.
14
OLAF USED HIS new uber-cell phone to search online for the nearest university or college that might have what we needed. University of Texas at Austin was the winner, with both Persian and Iranian studies and a minor available in Near Eastern mythology. Other universities and colleges had the first two but not the third. He left a
