She pivoted and strode into my office, bellowing out orders to the officers already inside.
Surprise in his voice, Ronald said, ‘Wow, that policewoman really doesn’t like you, Dr Knight. What did you do to piss her off?’
I almost responded by saying, ‘What do you think I did to piss her off?’ but caught myself before giving the automatic therapy reply to a patient’s question.
Instead, I shrugged. ‘I honestly don’t know. Something about me bothered her from the first moment she laid eyes on me. Maybe I remind her of someone else.’
‘Or maybe she knew you in a past life?’
I turned towards the voice and was grateful and relieved to see Alan approaching. He covered the short distance between us quickly and put his arm around my shoulders.
‘I couldn’t believe my ears when I heard the address of the homicide on my scanner. What happened? Did one of your clients go berserk?’
‘No. Someone broke in and destroyed my office.’
He tightened his grip on my shoulders. ‘Well, your trusty FBI agent is always here for you. Who died?’
The shoulder resting against him relaxed. ‘A friend of Midnight’s. A boy. One of the other vampire apprentices.’
‘This is a vampire thing?’ He unceremoniously dropped his arm and sprinted off into my office, leaving me with my mouth hanging open.
So much for being here for me.
I sighed and backed up against the wall to wait for whatever Lieutenant Bullock had in store.
True to her word, she sent officers out to interview Midnight and Ronald, and a detective to talk to me.
The detective politely asked questions that I only had one answer for: I don’t know. With each similar response from me, he appeared more frustrated.
I couldn’t blame him for being sceptical. This was the third police interrogation I’d participated in during the past week and even I had trouble believing that I had no worthwhile information to share.
How had I managed to involve myself in so many situations where I felt like a chess piece being moved around on some cosmic board by unseen hands?
Somebody had obviously delivered the blood-covered material in the manila envelope. All I did was open it and report it to the police. To the best of my knowledge, I hadn’t purposely lost my memory, strolled away from The Crypt and crawled into a disgusting mausoleum to take a nap in an occupied coffin. And unless I’d been abducted by aliens, causing me to have missing time, all I had done this morning was come to my office.
All the same, I realised my protestations of unaware innocence might be wearing pretty thin for the authorities right about then.
Finally Lieutenant Bullock emerged from my office, motioned to the ever-patient detective who’d continued to rephrase his questions in ways he thought might elicit additional information from me, and they shared an animated whispered conversation.
The detective ambled over to the officers still questioning Midnight and Ronald. Lieutenant Bullock approached me, frowning.
‘I’d like a private word, Dr Knight. Is there a lounge area or break room on this floor?’
I’d prepared myself for many possible opening lines from her, but that one took me completely by surprise, which must have been written all over my face.
‘There’s a small lounge area inside the women’s toilets. Will that do?’ I pointed past the elevators.
She launched herself down the hallway, indicating I should follow.
When we reached the toilet door she paused, pivoted and called to a uniformed officer standing in the hall, ‘Greenfield!’ She beckoned him over with a peremptory hand gesture, then pointed to the floor at her feet. ‘Stand here. No one comes in.’
We waited while the officer dutifully stationed himself outside the bathroom.
Lieutenant Bullock pushed open the door, held it while I entered and surveyed the small lounge area.
My curiosity had morphed into nervousness when she’d assigned the officer to stand guard at the door. At least that was what it appeared he was doing. She hadn’t mentioned it specifically, but if no one could come in, it wasn’t likely I could leave without obstruction either.
‘Sit,’ she ordered, pointing to a red leather couch.
I sat. The dried blood on the seat of my trousers crunched like cardboard.
She paced in front of me for a few seconds, her hands clasped in back, then stopped. She assumed a military-style stance, feet so many inches apart, shoulders back.
The situation forced me totally out of my depth, and out of my comfort zone. I had absolutely no idea what we were doing in the women’s bathroom, or why she’d taken me aside. I wasn’t sure where to look so I focused on her sturdy black shoes.
When she finally spoke, her voice quiet, I met her eyes. ‘This is awkward for me because it flies in the face of everything I believe in. Not only am I about to give police information to a civilian, but I also intend to raise an issue that will sound crazy and might reflect poorly on me as a law-enforcement professional. Although being a psychologist, I suspect you’re used to having people tell you questionable stories.’ She was silent again for a few seconds, then loudly cleared her throat. ‘Stevens has been spinning some wild yarns about vampires, or “wannabes”, as he calls them. He says there’s quite a community of them here in the central Denver area. He’s got some bizarre theories, but he keeps the details to himself because he thinks I won’t believe him. What he doesn’t know is that I’ve been following the same trail of deaths that he has, and I’ve come to similar outrageous conclusions.’
She believes in vampires? No way.
‘If he’s keeping his theories to himself, how do you know what conclusions he’s reached?’
She lifted her chin. ‘Let’s just say I stumbled upon his notebook one day when he was downtown using the computer and eyeballed enough pages to get the drift. I’ve also overheard enough of his strange telephone conversations to whet my appetite for more information.’
‘So, basically you’re saying that you read his private papers?’
She made a swatting-away-a-fly hand motion. ‘Don’t go there. The bottom line is that he believes there are actually such creatures as vampires, and insane as it sounds, the evidence I’ve seen supports it. Stevens thinks my interest in this case is due to the fact that my friend was the first Denver victim, and he’s right – Webster’s murder does play into it. But that’s not where it started for me.’
‘Where did it start?’
She crossed her arms in front of her chest.
Hmm, arm-crossing. She feels the need to defend herself. Interesting.
‘I was a cop in New York City ten years ago when these murders began to pop up. Long story short, I found my partner’s body drained of blood and riddled with pairs of puncture wounds. The perpetrator was never apprehended. The victim in your office was killed by the same method as all ninety-six others. He was drained of blood.’
‘Ninety-six others?’ I blurted, and sat up straighter. ‘I haven’t heard anything about ninety-six murders. You said on the news there were five bodies, and there was no mention of the cause of death.’
‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Ninety-six altogether – ninety-seven now, twenty-seven of them in Denver. We haven’t released that information to the public – I’m sure you can appreciate how the average citizen might react to finding out there’s a serial killer who somehow removes the victims’ blood while they’re still alive. But there’s another piece to this sick puzzle, and that’s what I want to talk to you about.’
‘Me? I’ve already told the detective everything I know.’
She pulled a small chair from the corner, set it in front of me and sat. She leaned back and rested one ankle on the opposite knee.