—THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST
59.
She spent the morning doing police work—real police work. Following up leads and examining crime scenes. There was plenty to find. The vampire had been busy.
By ten-thirty it started raining, a faint drizzle that felt more like mist. Water shook down from the trees and soaked the leaves on the sidewalks. Where Caxton’s shoes brushed away the oak leaves they left brown spiky stains on the concrete, shadows cut loose in the silvery light.
The chief arrived in a car with a gold badge on its hood and just a single blue light on top. He stepped out and glared at her, not even trying to hide his annoyance. He wore a heavy yellow raincoat with reflective tape across the back. He rushed toward her while opening an umbrella.
“You told me you had this under control,” he said.
“I told you to stay on your toes,” she replied.
It wasn’t what she’d wanted to say. It was a game she was playing, though, and she’d never been very good at games. This time she needed a solid win.
“I’d hoped we’d seen the last of you,” he said. He had a tight smile on his face that was probably the closest he could manage to a look of patient concern. “That’s why we brought you in. You’re supposed to know how to handle these things.”
The chief would have been briefed at least once by his officers. He had to know what was going on. Still he wanted to put the blame on her. To make her say it was all her fault. That wouldn’t help anybody.
Carefully she laid out their shared problem. “There were ninety-nine more skeletons in that cavern. Our vampire has managed to remove them all to an unknown location. He has also come into possession of the hearts that used to belong to those ninety-nine vampires. If he puts the hearts together with the bones he can wake them up. All of them. Tonight, just before seven, they’ll rise from their coffins and they’ll be very, very hungry.” She had to play this just right, she knew. Not step on his toes, but not kowtow to him either. “This is your show. You have some pretty tough decisions to make. I’ll be happy to advise you if I can.”
“You’re saying he came back here.” The chief just didn’t seem to get it. She needed to fix that. “You’re saying there are going to be more of them?”
Caxton nodded. “I’m sorry to drag you all the way out here. I just thought you should see this for yourself.”
Arkeley would not have played this game, she knew. He wouldn’t have had to. He would have bulled into town and demanded his due share of respect and power and he would have run things his way from the start. She’d already blown any chance of doing that—already squandered what goodwill the chief might once have felt toward her.
Glauer had filled her in on what had happened while she’d been in Philadelphia. Already Vicente had tried to undermine her. He’d made a big show of inviting her down to Gettysburg originally because he thought she could kill the vampire in one night and make all the bad things go away without putting any of his men at risk. She had been the famous vampire killer, the one they made that movie about—surely one vampire would be no problem for her to dispatch. It hadn’t worked out that way. Instead she had scared off all the tourists—the town’s lifeblood—and cost the local businesses untold amounts of money.
Everybody in this world has a boss, and the chief of police’s boss was the mayor. There had been an emergency meeting of the chamber of commerce. The National Park Service, which was its own little fiefdom in a town with more history than people, had weighed in as well. They weren’t happy at all. The mayor, who knew nothing about vampires, had come down hard on Vicente. Ripped him a new asshole, as Glauer put it (and this from a man who had trained himself never to curse in polite conversation).
Shit rolls downhill. Bureaucracy rolls faster. Vicente had put the blame on the state police and more specifically on Trooper Laura Caxton. It had been her misconduct that had hurt the town, he claimed. In short, he had covered his ass. His question the previous night, when he had asked her if his men could stand down, had followed immediately.
He knew the danger his town was in—knew it intellectually, but didn’t really understand. He was a lot more worried about losing his job.
Which meant she had to convince him there were some things more important than political advancement. He could still send her packing if she didn’t get through to him. Send her away with polite thanks and say he would take it from there. She couldn’t let that happen.
“Would you come this way, Chief?” she asked.
She led him down an alleyway between a bank and a dry cleaner’s. More yellow police tape blocked it off from traffic. Halfway down the narrow lane stood a car, a Ford Focus with New Jersey state tags. It looked like three people were sleeping inside, one in the driver’s seat, two in the rear seat leaning against each other.
“Jesus, no,” Vicente said, staring. She could feel his tension in the wet air. “That’s not—”
“I’m afraid so. Your people found the car early this morning, just as I was getting into town. At first they didn’t even think to connect it to my investigation.” Caxton took a key from Glauer and unlocked the driver’s-side door. When she pulled it open a foul wave of stink rolled out of the car. The stink of death.
“Officer Glauer heard the report on his car radio and put the pieces together. It’s important you look, Chief,” she said.
Vicente stared at her. She was pushing him hard, but she had no choice.
They had made a solid identification of Subject One, the woman sitting in the driver’s seat. Her face was a pretty close match for the picture on the driver’s license in her pocket. What was left of her face, anyway. Her name was Linda Macguire and she was—had been—a resident of Tenafly, New Jersey.
The state police records and identification unit up in Harrisburg had contacted her husband and he was on his way to make an official identification.
The two kids in the back were Cathy Macguire, aged sixteen and Linda’s only child, and Darren Jackson, also of Tenafly, aged seventeen. Cathy’s boyfriend. According to Macguire’s husband, Linda, Cathy, and Darren had been on vacation in Philadelphia the night before. They’d gone to see the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall.
Linda had most of her shoulder torn away, the tattered ends of her shirt wrapped around her neck. The kids had massive defensive wounds on their arms and both of their throats had been torn out. All three of them were exsanguinated, and only minimal bloodstains had been found on the car’s floor mats.
“What did he do?” Vicente asked, very quietly.
“He needed someone to drive him here from Philly,” Caxton answered. “Most likely he just approached the first car he saw and forced his way inside.” The door handle on the front passenger’s side showed signs of stress, as if the vampire had tried to rip the door open. “He kept them alive—at least, he kept the driver alive—so she could operate the vehicle. Times of death have not been established yet, so we don’t know if he killed the kids in Philly or only after he got here. When he was done with the driver he killed her, too.”
“You mean she could have been driving for hours knowing that her daughter and her boyfriend were already dead back there?” Vicente asked.
“He can be very persuasive when he needs a ride,” Caxton said, her cheeks turning red with shame. If she had refused to take the vampire to Philadelphia, if she had just forced him to kill her on the spot, these people might still be alive—
She had more important things to do than feel guilty.
“Shall we move on to the next scene?” Caxton asked.
