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. No more mistakes, she swore.
“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.
The chief wheeled around to stare at her. “Don’t tell me there’s more bodies.”
Caxton looked over at Glauer. Glauer just shrugged and failed to make eye contact with anybody. He’d never worked a homicide case before. Neither had the chief. Hell of a way to start, Caxton thought.
60.
I lit out at once for Gum Spring. My orders were quite vague, which was hardly unusual, yet there was enough in them to chill me. A creature had been discovered there, a vampire. I thought such evils were banished from the earth. Yet this war had dug up so many ancient wrongs—fratricide, treason and espionage among the more mild.
At a field morgue in Maryland, I once saw teamsters fitting bodies for pinewood coffins. If the dead man in question proved too tall they would jump in with him, and trample on his feet and legs, until he became a shorter being and would fit better. Then there were the amputated limbs, stacked like cordwood, ripe with decay. When they found some man missing an arm or a leg they would place one from the proper pile in with his remains, taking no pains whatsoever to ensure the right man was matched with the right appendage.
I chastised such men when I saw their work, but only the first time. I learned quickly what every soldier knows. A man is counted lucky, who is buried by his mother back at home. For most a shallow grave on foreign soil is their only recompense for service, a grave dug deep as possible by the decedent’s friends, so that hogs and other animals may not root it up.
Should dumb animals, should nature herself have turned against us, what surprise is there in a risen corpse come to prey upon the living? None. Yet a vampire—what the deuce could this have to do with me?
—THE PAPERS OFWILLIAMPITTENGER
61.
Bright yellow police tape wrapped around the house on Railroad Street leased to Jeff Montrose and three roommates. The house was a gray-painted clapboard affair with plenty of gables and a porch with white gingerbread details. Some of the carved wood had come loose and hung on rusty nails. Around the foundation clumps of ailanthus and hydrangea hung wilted and sodden. A basement window on the side of the house flashed with the trapped light of the police cruisers that filled the street.
Caxton shook out the collar of her jacket, spraying water everywhere, and hurried toward the house, gesturing at the white wooden porch with its loose gingerbread. “This house is rented in part to a graduate student at the college, one Jeff Montrose. I tried to contact him to ask him about the coffins but he didn’t answer his phone. Officer Glauer and I came here to see if we could find him, or at least figure out where he might have gone.”
Vicente went in first and then she followed. Glauer stayed outside. He didn’t explain why, but she supposed he didn’t have to. He’d already seen what was inside.
Vicente stamped his feet on a mat inside the front door. It was warm and mostly dry in the front room, a big living space with a pair of mismatched couches and a television on top of a plastic milk crate.
Beyond, through a high archway, stood the kitchen—dishes in the sink, a refrigerator full of leftover Chinese food.
In any normal crime scene the room would be full of forensics cops taking samples, lifting prints, cutting fibers from the stained shag carpet. There was no need this time. Caxton had already learned what she needed to know from the house from her previous visit.
She led Vicente up a wooden staircase that creaked at every other step. The old woven runner that draped across the risers was faded and worn through in places. Silvery light from an exterior window brightened the wall ahead of them and dazzled their eyes. At the top a hallway split off toward four different bedrooms. Three of the doors were closed. Mary Klein, Fisher Hawkins, and Madison Chou Zhang owned those rooms. All three were accounted for, safe at the homes of parents or friends far away from Gettysburg. They had left town after hearing Caxton’s press conference the day before, even though it meant skipping classes. Montrose had the fourth room, the farthest one from the top of the stairs.