Evil Dark (29 page)

  Scanlon shook his head. "No reason to. It's pretty obvious this is where all the action went down."

  I was glad he said that, because if he'd wanted to send the forensics people poking around Karl's bedroom, I was going to have a sudden attack of amnesia regarding that lock combination. That might lead to some unpleasantness.

  "Who called it in?" I asked Scanlon.

  "Lady down the hall. She works part-time as a medical transcriptionist, and today's her day off. Says she heard what sounded like a thud coming from this end of the hall. Took her a couple of minutes to make up her mind to check it out, which is just as well. If she'd run into the perp as he was leaving, he'd probably have iced her, too."

  "Most likely," I said, "but I hope you didn't tell her that. She'll never come out of her apartment during the day again."

  "I decided not to share my conclusion with her," Scanlon said. "So, she decides to check out this 'thud' and takes a slow walk down the hall. God knows what she expected to find, but she did notice that Karl's door was ajar a couple of inches."

  "I thought that kind of thing only happened on TV," I said.

  "Yeah, I know what you mean. It's not unreasonable, though. The perp is in a hurry, he closes the door behind him, but doesn't stick around to make sure the latch has caught, the door falls open a couple of inches."

  "Cheap locks," I said. "No wonder Karl installed his own."

  "I would, too," Scanlon said. "So, Mrs Randall sees the gap between the door and the frame, comes over, and peeks through it. Turns out the line of sight gives her a clear view of the dead guy here, along with the mess on the wall. So she runs back to her apartment and calls 911."

  "A public-spirited citizen," I said. "We need more of those."

  I walked over to the wall decorated with most of the contents of the victim's skull. Amid the blood, bone fragments, and brain tissue were a number of small holes, each about the size of a dried pea.

  I went over next to Scanlon, and we stood there staring, side by side, like a couple of dweebs visiting an art museum for the first time.

  "Shotgun," I said to Scanlon.

  "Uh-huh."

  "By the size and number of the holes, I'd say doubleought buck. Those pellets are so big, the cartridge only holds eight of 'em."

  "That's what Forensics thinks, too."

  I looked down at the corpse. "They make suppressors for shotguns these days, you know."

  "Yeah, I've read about those," Scanlon said.

  "'Course, you can only do so much with a shotgun, when it comes to sound suppression."

  "Those fuckers are pretty loud, all right."

  "Best you can hope for, even with a good suppressor, is to reduce the noise from
blam
to something kind of like a
thud
."

  "Sounds about right," Scanlon said. He turned and looked at me. "I read a report the other day about a dude who supposedly used a suppressed shotgun to take out a couple of goblins, who were attempting to eviscerate an officer of the law."

  "That's what happened, all right."

  "According to the report, the officer in question was able to make a tentative identification of the suspect."

  "Yeah," I said. "He was."

  "Which leads us to the question," Scanlon said, "of what the fuck Sharkey was doing here, blowing the head off some would-be vampire slayer."

  "You're sure that's what the vic was? Not some run-ofthe-mill B and E artist?"

  "Oh, that's right," Scanlon said. "You haven't seen this stuff, yet. Come here."

  I followed him over to Karl's sofa. On it was a long canvas bag, like the kind tennis players carry their rackets in. Scanlon sat down next to it and snapped on a pair of thin latex gloves.

  "We found this next to the body," Scanlon said, and pulled the bag's zipper open. I had my own gloves on by now.

  Scanlon removed from the bag a two-foot-long wooden stake with a sharp point and handed it to me. "He's got two more of those in here," he said.

  I turned the stake over in my hands. "Made on a lathe," I said. "Wonder if he learned that in high school shop class."

  "No wonder they call it 'occupational training'," Scanlon said. "Then there's this."

  He produced a big mallet with a black rubber head and showed it to me. "Why rubber, and not metal?" he asked.

  "Rubber on wood – less chance of slipping than iron on wood," I said. "You don't want to risk whacking your fingers when you're dispatching the bloodsucking undead."

  "Trust you to know something like that," he said. "And we have this, which I don't figure was his lunch."

  He handed me a large plastic baggie with a zip-lock top. It contained a freshly cut flower with a four-inch stem and a bushy white head.

  "Wild garlic," I said, handing it back to him. "Traditionalists use it, along with the wooden stake. It's the Van Helsing method, which some people still swear by. Stake through the heart, cut off the head, and fill the mouth with garlic."

  "That would explain this, then." Scanlon pulled from the bag and handed me a saw with a foot-long blade and orthopedic pistol grip. I recognized it as an amputation saw, the kind surgeons use. The blade was splattered with brown stains that I figured had once been red.

  "He came well prepared," I said to Scanlon, and gave the saw back to him.

  "The only thing that puzzles me is this."

  He handed me a device that looked like what you'd get if you crossed an iPhone with an expensive calculator. It had two wires dangling from it with odd-looking plugs at the ends.

  I looked at it, and then it occurred to me that the little keypad looked like the one on Karl's lock. That's when I realized what I was holding.

  "I've never seen one of these," I told Scanlon, "but I've read about them. It's a gizmo that's supposed to crack the code on an electronic combination lock." I nodded toward Karl's bedroom. "Like that one."

  Scanlon took it back from me. "I thought that was strictly James Bond stuff."

  "Don't say that around Karl," I said, "unless you want a twenty-minute description of every similar gadget that ever showed up in one of those movies."

  Scanlon started putting the vampire-killing gear back in the bag. "Guess yesterday's James Bond fantasy is today's reality. This dude really was well prepared."

  "My guess is, he broke in for the first time a few days ago, and did a little reconnaissance."

  "You figure he saw the lock, and realized he'd need special equipment to beat it."

  I nodded. "Looks like if Sharkey, or whoever it was, hadn't stepped in, one of those fucking sticks would now be sticking out of Karl's chest."

  It looked like I'd have to buy Sharkey a beer sometime – or a blood, or whatever the hell he drinks.

  "I know you'll be sending this guy's prints out on the wire," I said to Scanlon. "But you might save some time and trouble if you send them to Chicago first. Ask them to check the prints against those of a guy they call Duffy the Vampire Slayer."

  Scanlon's face twitched, which I suppose was his version of a smile. He's not a big smiler, Scanlon. "Duffy the Vampire Slayer? No shit?"

  "No shit."

 

I got home – again – a little after two in the afternoon. I was still riding the adrenaline wave that Harry West's call had given me, so I figured I'd better make some coffee and face the fact that I wasn't going to sleep again until my next shift was over.

  Once the coffee maker was burbling away, I went into the living room to see if anything interesting was on TV. I didn't think my brain could handle anything complicated, like reading a newspaper. I got interested in a show on AMC that I'd never seen before, about a candidate for president who's secretly possessed by a demon. The next thing I knew, Christine was gently shaking my arm and saying, "Wake up, Daddy. Time to get ready for work."

  I came awake with a start. "Shit!" I said. "Must've dozed off." I rubbed my face a couple of times and yawned. "Although, come to think of it, that's the best thing that could've happened." I checked my watch. Three and a half hours of sleep was better than none.

  I saw that the answering machine's red light was blinking. I'd been down so deep, I hadn't even heard the phone ring.

  Christine had heard Karl's message, too. She looked at me and said, "What the hell was
that
about?"

  "I'll tell you about it over breakfast, honey. But right now I need a shower and a change of clothes."

  "Want me to make you some eggs while you're upstairs? Save you some time when you come down."

  "Hey, they'd be great, thanks. Messing with human food won't gross you out?"

  "No, I don't think so. Watching you eat eggs with ketchup – now
that
grosses me out."

  A little later, while eating the scrambled eggs she'd made – yeah, I had 'em with ketchup; sue me – I filled Christine in on the latest series of crises.

  She frowned into her cup, swirling around the small amount of Type A that remained in it. "So, do you figure this guy was after Karl because he's" – she made a face – "one of the bloodsucking undead, or because he's your partner?"

  "Could be either one, I suppose. But there's lots of vampires in Scranton, so the odds are against him being randomly targeted as just another step toward Helter Skelter."

  She nodded. "Good point."

  "Besides," I said, "that bunch of goblins came after
me
the other night, remember? That could be more Helter Skelter too, I guess – just another human murdered by supes. But the likelihood of both Karl and me being chosen by chance for that shit is pretty damn low."

  "I was thinking about that attack on you last night," she said, "when things got slow at work, and it doesn't make sense. I mean, how would a human go about assembling a goblin hit squad? You can't just stroll through Goblin Market calling, 'Hey, anybody wanna knife a cop tonight? I'll throw in all the meth you can snort'."

  "Yeah, I see what you mean. Any outsider who tried that would be lucky not to get knifed himself."

  "He'd have to use a middleman, wouldn't he, our Mister X? Or middle-goblin. Someone to do the recruiting for him."

  I put my fork down as my brain finally started working again. "He'd have to put the word out, somehow. And whenever any kind of word goes out to the supe community, there's a guy who's sure to hear it."

  "You mean Mister Castle?"

  "No, he might be a little too high up for something like that to reach him. I was thinking of someone lower in the food chain."

  "How low?" she asked.

  "Low enough to consider human flesh a delicacy."

  "Oh, ewwww."

  I grinned at her. "Nice talk, for one of the bloodsucking undead."

  She gave me a shrug and a grin. "Hey, everybody's gotta have standards."

 

"Tell Christine if she ever gets tired answering emergency calls, there might be a slot for her on the police force," McGuire said. "How did the goblins get organized – you should've thought about that before now – and so should I."

  "Better late than not at all," I said. "I told you I wanted to drop by the U tonight. Father Duvall's got an office hour from eight to nine."

  "Yeah, I'll be interested to hear what he has to say about these True Cross nutjobs – if that's what they are."

  "Well, since Karl's gonna be tangled up with Homicide for a while, I thought before I visit Father Duvall I'd stop in at Renfield's."

  "For what?" McGuire asked.

  "I'm hoping to see a ghoul about a goblin."

  Renfield's is Scranton's biggest bar catering to a supernatural clientele. They let humans in, of course, just as a supe can get a drink, of whatever he wants, at any other bar in town. Discrimination's illegal – the courts have been very clear on that point.

  But it's not surprising that supes prefer the company of their own, even if the different species aren't always on the best of terms with each other. Vampires and werewolves, for instance, don't always get along too well – but anybody who starts trouble in Renfield's is banned for life. And for some of these folks, that can be a very, very long time.

  I noticed that the volume of conversation ebbed for a few seconds when I walked in. It always does, even though I'm on pretty good terms with most of the supe community. In my job you have to be, regardless of your personal feelings. The talk had returned to its normal level by the time I reached the bar.

  I ordered a ginger ale from Elvira, the bartender, then turned around to lean on the bar, facing the room. I scanned the tables and was relieved to see that Barney Ghougle was here, having a drink with his brother. Algernon keeps getting into trouble with the law – he's got a little indecent exposure problem – so Barney and I have done a certain amount of business over the years. Nobody knows the current dirt like a ghoul, and Barney is the gossip king of Wyoming Valley.

  It's better that I not go walking around amongst the tables in Renfield's. Having a cop on the prowl makes some people – and a few others – nervous. So I waited until I caught Barney's eye, then made a slight nod. A few moments later he got up from his chair and made his way toward me.