"I suppose your vampire theory's as good as any other. Probably better than most." The car bumped over a particularly big pothole, bottoming out, and he put a hand on the shaking dashboard to steady himself.
"Tell me this. Do you think Pee Wee's going to buy the vampire idea?"
"I have no idea. But I thought, at the very least, that he might be able to tell us something we don't know. Maybe this has happened before, and it was all covered up. Maybe the town was built on burial grounds or something."
Rich shook his head. "What don't we know about this town? We've lived here all our lives. I'm the editor of the paper; you're the police chief. You think there's some deep dark secret that's been hidden from us all these years?"
"I don't know. I'm just throwing out ideas." "Well, throw that one out for sure. It's stupid." "We'll see."
The bloom of summer was still visible on the low upward sloping floor of the canyon, the pink cactus flowers land tiny yellow blossoms of brittle bush not yet having gotten word that winter had arrived. The road hugged the southern butte as the canyon opened out, widening into a plain that flattened into desert a few miles eastward. From here they could already see the pointed triangular contours of Pee Wee's home and, next to it, his old metal windmill, silhouetted against the morning sun, tail pointed east, vanes, turning slowly in the nearly nonexistent desert wind.
Robert honked three times and gave a short whoop of the siren to let the old chief know they were coming, although he had no doubt seen the growing dust cloud kicked up by the car. The sound echoed off the rock walls, loud even with the windows up.
"What if he's not home?" Rich said.
"I called. Besides, he's always home."
There was a corral close by the house, a square patch of dry tramped dirt fenced in by four irregular posts and a single strip of barbed wire, and within the corral, a bony horse stood on the hard ground, staring southward.
Robert parked the car next to the west side of the corral, and the two of them got out simultaneously. Pee Wee was already walking toward them from the house, grinning hugely. "Glad to see you boys. It's been a while."
"glad to see you, too," Robert said, extending his hand.
Pee Wee shook the proffered palm. "Not a bad grip," he commented. "The job hasn't let you go too far to seed." He nodded to Rich. "Good thing your brother called first instead of just dropping by like he usually does. I was all set to go rabbit hunting this morning."
Robert spat in the dirt. "Out by Dry Beaver Creek?" "Yeah." Pee Wee chuckled, shook his head. "Dry Bea ver Creek. Whoever thought of that name? It had to be a joke."
"Maybe they were thinking of your sister."
"Or mama." your
Rich smiled politely, not joining in. He never had gone in for this sort of macho camaraderie, and he didn't know how to do it. Even witnessing it made him slightly uncomfortable.
"It's chilly out here this morning." Pee Wee nodded toward the house.
"Let's go inside, have some coffee, talk."
Robert grinned. "I hear you."
The two of them started walking, Rich following only a few steps behind.
Pee Wee spat. "So the feds're tryin' to horn in on your territory, huh?"
"Not only trying," Robert said. "Succeeding."
"Can't say that ever happened to me. Nothin' big enough ever occurred here in my day to interest the feds." "But if it had?"
"I woulda fought 'em tooth and nail."
"My approach exactly."
"I hate to bring reality into this," Rich said, catching up and drawing even. "But the important thing is that the murderer get caught, not who catches him. The way you're talking, I can just see you and Rossiter hoarding information, not sharing things with each other, trying to be the first to crack the case."
"Yeah, right," Robert said.
"He has a point," the ex-chief nodded gravely. "Your first duty is to your office, not your ego."
"I know that. But the two aren't mutually exclusive."
They walked into the house. The small narrow entryway opened onto a huge living room with a vaulted ceiling nearly two stories high. One whole wall of the room was an eastward-facing window that offered a truly spectacular view of the open desert past the canyon.
Pee Wee excused himself, went into the kitchen to get the coffee, and Rich and Robert walked silently around the big room, examining the new mirrors hanging on the wall opposite the window. The reflection of the desert in the angular hexagons and parallelograms gave the already oversize room an aura of true vastness, making the house seem as though it were suspended in air high above the sand.
A collection of hunting trophies adorned the stone fire place to the left of the mirrors, and when the old man returned, carrying mugs of black Yuban, Robert pointed up at the mounted head of a javelina. "Is that new?"
Pee Wee shook his head. "I ain't got nothing new for weeks now. The game source has pretty well dried up around here. I know there's been a drought for the past few years, but this is getting ridiculous. I haven't seen shit but lizards, vultures, and an occasional rabbit for the past month. Even the damn coyotes are playing possum."
Robert and Rich looked at each other.
I Robert sipped his coffee, preparing to speak, but before he could say anything Pee Wee cut him off. "All right, what is it? What's up? You two've been pussyfootin' around something ever since you got here.
Spill it."
"What would you say if I told you that there was a vampire in Rio Verde?"
"I'd say you were a fool-assed chump and two sandwiches shy of a picnic."
Robert sipped his coffee. Rich nodded. "A week ago I would've said that," Pee Wee said. "But that was before I saw the body of that wild filly out by the wash. Now I say tell me more." bert glanced up. "You believe it?" don't not believe it. That filly was nothing but a mummified corpse, and two days before she'd been eating my scrub."
"We've found other animals too. And the mechanic and the groom and those two kids were all killed the same way. Drained of blood, emptied."
"Exsanguinated," Pee Wee said.
"Yes."
"Seems to me this is where the feds or the staters'd be some help. What do they say about this?"
Robert shrugged. "I haven't discussed it with them. The
FBI agent is in charge of the investigation, but if he has some sort of overall strategy in mind, he's not sharing it.
As far as I can tell, he's working on one body at a time.
And looking for a human suspect."
"Have you talked to the coroner?"
"He's the one who sprung the vampire theory on me.
He's autopsied the bodies and said there's no known way that the blood, urine, and everything could've been sucked out those holes in the necks."
"Necks." Pee Wee nodded, impressed. "Who's coroner these days?
Woods?"
"Yeah."
"He knows his stuff." Pee Wee walked over to a wooden rocking chair, sat down. "This is getting interesting'
Robert sat on the overstuffed couch adjacent to the fireplace. "I'm buying it too.
"What about you?" Pee Wee asked, looking over at Rich. "You haven't said much through all this."
"I don't know what to think. I haven't made up my mind yet. But it's definitely open."
The ex-chief nodded. "Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that we are dealing with a real vampire." He looked from Rich to Robert. "How often does he have to feed?"
Robert sighed. "The killings seem to be about a week or two apart."
"So he needs a body every two weeks."
"Plus animals," Rich reminded him
"Let's just deal with the humans for now. Okay, a body every two weeks. No correspondence with lunar cycles or any of that crap. That's good."
"Why's that good?" Because! "