I heard one of the officers yell into his communicator, requesting backup, as they chased along behind me, dodging gravestones and statues.
‘Dr Knight! Stop! We’re only trying to help you!’
I skidded to a halt a few feet from the door of the death chamber and pointed. The police hadn’t expected the race to end so suddenly, and they barely managed to avoid crashing into me as they slammed on their own brakes.
‘There!’ I jabbed my finger towards the mausoleum. ‘Through that door is a stairway. There are dead bodies inside.’
The lean, cerebral-looking officer reached out and grabbed my upper arm and tugged gently, coaxing me to accompany him as he started walking back towards the cemetery entrance.
‘Come on, Dr Knight. No more games. Let’s get you back to the police station and you can explain everything to the detectives. We’ve been instructed to bring you in immediately. The orders came straight from the chief.’ He glanced at his partner. ‘Did you know there was a cemetery back here?’ The beefy guy shook his head.
For some reason, getting me back to the police station seemed more important than investigating my story, so I opted for drastic measures. I wrenched my arm out of his hand and leaped over to the door and pulled it open. The smell made my stomach turn. I doubled over and yelled at the cops, ‘Go on! Nothing normal can smell that bad. You at least have to check it out!’
Each officer raised a hand up to his face, covered his mouth and pinched his nose, trying to stave off the odour. The larger one gagged. ‘That is one god-awful smell. Maybe some animal died in there. Let’s take a look.’
I moved away from the door and put as much space as possible between me and the stench. I bent forwards, bracing my hands just above my knees, still trying not to vomit.
‘I’ll go down and see what we’ve got. You stay up here with Dr Knight.’
The thin cop went through the door and down the stairs. Only a couple of seconds passed before he yelled, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ and scrambled back up the stairs, his face gone pasty and his eyes wide.
‘What’s wrong with you, McCarthy? You’re pale as a ghost!’
‘Go down and see for yourself, Landers. A picture’s worth a thousand words.’
Landers went through the door. Moments later I heard a gagging sound followed by ‘Shit!’ He raced back up the stairs and out into the slightly fresher air just as the requested backup arrived. They covered their noses, too.
A few minutes later, I was leaning against a large statue of an angel, drinking from the cup of steaming McDonald’s coffee one of the officers had handed me while the new arrivals investigated the carnage inside the tomb. Finding something that grotesque had to be the worst part of police work.
McCarthy called for the officers whose job would be to get up close and personal with the contents of the gory scene. Then he turned to me and stared, appearing a little green around the edges. ‘I apologise, Dr Knight. You were right – there are dead bodies down there. I haven’t been on the force that long, but this definitely qualifies as the worst thing I’ve seen. Were you really in there all night?’
‘I guess so. I can’t remember. All I know for sure is that I woke up there this morning.’
‘This place is going to be swarming with experts any minute, so it would probably be best if you let us take you downtown, away from here. You know the media’s going to show up, too, and I don’t think you want to face the world in that condition.’ He pointed to my grisly attire and shook his head. ‘Do you have a psychologist to talk to?’
I snorted. ‘I’m not sure any of them would believe me. I’m not even sure I believe me.’
He signalled to a female cop who’d just arrived. ‘Take Dr Knight downtown.’ Then he studied me again. ‘I’m glad you were persistent.’
‘That’s a nice word for it.’
He walked away, talking into his cell phone.
Exhausted, my stomach churning, I followed the policewoman out of the cemetery and into her black-and-white. She opened all the windows, then glanced at me in the rearview mirror and said, ‘No offence.’ We pulled away just as the caravan of TV news vehicles arrived and I was grateful I didn’t have to try to string two coherent sentences together because I would have failed. I hoped the process at the police station would be quick, but suspected I was doomed to disappointment.
Thanks to the manic media circus camped out around police headquarters, I had to be smuggled in via the underground parking structure and secretly ushered in through an old fire exit. My fifteen minutes of fame had apparently caused quite a frenzy. My abduction had been linked with the murder investigation, and the vampire theme was simply too rich for the tabloids to pass up.
My experience of sitting at the police station was like having one of those dreams about being in high school again, the one where no one talks to you and everyone walks wide circles around you while they stare, point, and laugh.
None of the cops was laughing, but anyone who got within ten feet of me cringed, recoiled, and rebounded away, giving me a wide berth. They were shocked to find their nostrils assailed by smells better suited to battlefields than to a psychologist whose face had evidently been on television all morning.
As one officer so succinctly put it, ‘There just aren’t words for that smell.’
It didn’t take long for me to give my statement, because all I could remember was the last couple of hours. I didn’t know what’d happened prior to my waking up and I had no clue about who’d brought me there.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry about getting out of there quickly. In fact, taking my statement in the close quarters of the badly ventilated station proved to be such a challenge that my hosts eagerly arranged for me to finish up at the lab.
I’d expected to be headed off to the shower and outfitted with one of those delightful orange garments, but that didn’t happen. In fact, ever since I’d arrived at the police station things had been strange. I’d been the focus of several whispered conversations, each containing the words ‘the chief’.
Officers had escorted me to the lab and while I was waiting for a blood sample to be taken the double doors burst open and a heavyset, white-haired, fifty-something male strode into the room. Everyone around me froze in mid-action and came to attention. The new arrival signalled to the other officers, who scurried over to him immediately.
I would have just stared out the window, waiting for the bureaucratic huddle to end, if it hadn’t been for the fact that various faces kept turning in my direction. It was entirely possible that I was still in shock, but I wasn’t a complete vegetable. Clearly those people were talking about me.
For a brief moment before the older man left, all the eyes in the group turned to me.
What the hell was going on? What weren’t they telling me? I hadn’t had much experience with the police, but being treated like a leper wasn’t anywhere in my expectations.
The lab technician who’d been preparing my arm for the blood sample before the older guy arrived came back and I said, ‘Who was that?’
He kept his eyes riveted on his task and said, ‘Chief Cassidy.’
‘Why was he talking about me?’
‘There, all finished. The officer will take you back now,’ he said, ignoring my question completely. He wrote my name on the samples, gathered up his materials, and nodded to a uniformed officer standing by the door.
A different officer led me back to the detectives’ bullpen. I figured I was going there to answer more questions – not that I had any answers – and I mentally steeled myself for a long stay. I was surprised when they quickly said I was free to go. It appeared they were taking me home and that someone would come to my house later to pick up my contaminated clothing.