Thirty-eight
Matt worked feverishly over TJ’s unconscious body. When they arrived at the hospital emergency room, she was unconscious, in shock, and dangerously anemic. Her fever was over 103 and she was having uncontrollable shaking chills.
He ordered a stat type and cross-match and as soon as the blood was available, started intravenous lines in both arms and hung two units of whole blood to be given simultaneously.
Shooter had to be physically restrained from trying to help and had been banished to the waiting room, where he waited with Shelly and Barbara Silver for results of the preliminary examination.
Matt performed a complete physical on TJ once the blood was infusing and her fever had been brought under control. While doing the pelvic examination, he noted bruises and abrasions around the groin and upper thighs and seminal fluid in the vagina, but none of the tearing or internal damage they had seen in the other victims. He paused, thinking about the implications of these findings, then went on with his examination.
He noted the bite and suck marks on her breasts and the small, almost delicate twin puncture wounds on her neck. He also found bits of flesh under her fingernails and long, shallow furrows on her back where she had been scratched or clawed.
As Matt stood and removed his gloves, he had the uncomfortable thought that the findings were not so different from what might be observed following a particularly vigorous night of sex. He called a guard and had TJ transferred to the jail floor, where her windows would have bars and there would be a twenty-four-hour guard on her room.
Sam had stood silently by, holding her friend’s hand, watching Matt’s examination without comment. After TJ had been taken upstairs, they collected Shelly and Barbara and Shooter. Matt refused to answer any questions until they got some coffee and snacks and were seated in the hospital cafeteria. Sam took a bite of her Danish, then said to the others, “As far as we can tell, TJ is out of immediate danger, medically.”
Shooter asked, “Has she said anything . . . was she able to . . . ?”
Matt placed a hand on his arm. “Shooter, she’s still unconscious.”
Shooter placed his coffee cup on the table, glanced first at Sam, then at Matt. He averted his eyes and hung his head. “Matt, I . . . I don’t quite know how to say this . . . but . . .”
Barbara put her hand on his arm and started to speak, but a sharp glance from Shelly silenced her.
“Go on, Shooter,” Matt prompted gently.
“Well . . .” He blushed furiously. “Was there any sign that she had been . . . umm, you know . . .”
“Shooter, all I can tell you is that TJ appears in relatively good shape physically, especially in view of what she’s been through.” Matt took a deep breath. “We’re still waiting on the results of further blood and X-ray tests, but until they’re available I don’t have any other information. Her main problems at present are the anemia, apparently from acute loss of blood, and the infection that is causing her high fever.”
Shooter looked up, a hopeful expression on his face. “You mean there is no sign that she’s been raped or . . .”
Matt let his voice became firm, more professional. “Shooter, I’ve told you all I can in good conscience. I know that you and TJ are . . . close, but the details of her medical condition are confidential.” He looked away, unable to meet Shooter’s eyes. “I can, however, tell you that I saw no sign that she was sexually assaulted against her will, and there was none of the severe tissue damage that we found in the other victims.”
Barbara, who could read doctor-speak like a book, reached under the table and secretly squeezed Matt’s leg, giving him a tiny smile of gratitude for what she instinctively knew was a lie. Shelly just peered at Matt through narrowed eyes.
Shooter stood and pitched his napkin on the table. “Matt, if you’re sure TJ’s in no immediate danger and there’s nothing I can do here, I need to get back out to the warehouse. I sent a couple of squad cars out as soon as you called, but I haven’t been able to raise Sherry on her handheld mike.”
Sam nodded. “You go on, Shooter. Barb and I’ll stay by TJ’s side for the rest of the night. We’ll let you know if anything changes.”
After he left, Barbara took Sam’s hands in hers and looked directly into her eyes. “Now, tell me what you and Matt didn’t tell Shooter.”
Sam’s eyes looked haunted. “Barb, it looks like TJ had intercourse with the vampire, and that he drank her blood.”
“Oh my God,” whispered Barbara, raising her hand to her mouth.
Shelly’s face blanched, and his eyes filled with tears.
“And that’s not the worst of it,” Matt added. “There’s also evidence that she was not an unwilling victim.”
Shelly then told Matt that Clark had called while they were working on TJ and asked if he and Sam could meet him at the mayor’s office.
“Matt, you and Sam go and help Clark convince the mayor that we need to catch this monster, no matter what it takes.”
Matt hesitated, hating to leave a patient in TJ’s precarious condition. Shelly put his hand on Matt’s shoulder. “Go on. I’ll stay and monitor TJ’s vital signs and lab reports. If anything changes, I’ll beep you immediately.”
Matt told himself the best thing he could do for TJ now was to catch the bastard that did this to her. He grabbed Sam’s hand and they hurried to meet Damon Clark.
* * *
Clark and Sam and Matt sat in the mayor’s office, discussing their options with him and the chief of police. Matt had the feeling that Mayor Thomas R. Scofield was in big trouble. He was heir to an enormous oil fortune, and, by Houston standards, was considered “old money.” He was the first Republican mayor to have been elected in Houston in over ten years, and he owed his success to a tough anticrime stance that had appealed to a population suffering from a murder and violent crime rate second only to Washington, D.C.’s.
He was in the final year of his four-year term, and his recent reelection speeches, bragging how he had made the streets safe once again for middle Americans, were about to explode in his face. His chief of police and close personal friend for over twenty-five years, John “Black Jack” McGraw, was sitting across his desk, trying to help him decide how to break the news of a serial killer to the press without committing political suicide.
“Goddamn it, John, how could you do this to me?” asked Scofield, pulling and tugging on his mustache.
McGraw gave Clark and Sam and Matt a scathing look, as if the killings were somehow their fault, while holding up a placating hand. “Just a minute, Tom. I didn’t cause this crazy to go around killin’ people and drinkin’ their blood. In fact, I didn’t even know about it myself until this week.”
Scofield slammed his hand down on his desk. “Shit!” He fixed McGraw with the ice-blue eyes that had been such an asset with the female voters. “That’s just the point. You didn’t know shit! How did that TV bitch find out about all this in the first place? I thought we had decided to keep the investigation under wraps.”
“I’d give a month’s pay to find that out myself.” He dug in his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and silently gestured for permission to smoke. When Scofield nodded his okay, McGraw lit one. He looked over at Clark. “How about that, Damon? How could you let this get out?”
Matt noted that Damon’s face was covered with a light sheen of sweat, though his expression was as cool as ever. He shrugged. “I’ve explained that. She must have an informant in my department. I don’t know who it is yet, but I’ll find out.”
Scofield looked at his watch. “Speaking of that bitch, I wonder where she is.”
Matt cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Mr. Mayor, but Hillary James was at the warehouse when we found Dr. O’Reilley. She must have followed Officer Sherry Landry and me when we went there from the tax office.”
Scofield leaned back, his face pale. “Just what we need . . . full TV coverage of one of the victims of this maniac.”
His secretary stuck her head in the door. “Mr. Scofield, the reporters in the outer office are getting rather . . . impatient.”
“Please tell them it will just be a few more minutes.”
He turned his attention back to McGraw. “Okay, John, it’s decision time. How much do we tell the press?”
McGraw stuck his finger in his collar, loosening it and stretching his neck. “Tom, as Damon says, we have a leak in the department. I don’t think we can afford to stonewall this; the risk is simply too great.”
“You’re right. I’d rather face the heat now than get caught in a lie later.” He stood and faced the window with his hands in his pockets, watching the rivulets of rain course down the pane. “I’ll state that we have under investigation the fact that there may be a serial killer operating in and around Houston, and that his signature is the cutting of the victims’ throats.” He turned and pointed a well-manicured finger at McGraw and Clark. “But I want no mention of cannibalism or drinking blood or that the code name for him is the ‘vampire killer.’ Christ, they’re going to go crazy as it is.”
McGraw looked at Clark, ignoring Sam and Matt. “We’ll have to be deliberately vague as to the number of suspected victims. If asked, I’ll simply state that we’re keeping that as a confidential fact so as not to endanger our prosecution of the killer. That is, if Officer Landry manages to capture him at the warehouse.”
Damon took a cigarette out of his gold case and lit it, letting the smoke trail from his nostrils. “Of course, we might get lucky and Sherry might kill the bastard. That would solve most of our publicity problems.”
Scofield took a brush from his middle desk drawer and smoothed back his thinning hair, asking, “Have you got plenty of backup for this . . .” He leaned forward and glanced at Damon’s report on his desk. “Officer Landry?”
“Yessir,” answered Clark. “But we have to be careful. If I rush a bunch of extra troops over there now, it might alert him to our presence and spook him. If he runs, there’s no telling if, or when, we’ll pick up his trail again.”
McGraw said, “I just hope you know what you’re doin’, letting a female officer go after him.”
Damon started to explain, “I didn’t exactly have a choice, Chief. She tracked him and found the hostage and was on the scene. It would have been too dangerous to try and replace her without him finding out. Besides, Sherry’s one of the best detectives on the force. I have complete confidence in her.”
They all jumped as Scofield’s phone rang. He picked it up and almost shouted, “Yes?”
He scowled and handed the phone to Damon. “It’s for you, an Officer Kowolski. Some kind of emergency.”
Damon hesitated, then reached slowly for the phone, as if it were a snake. “Yes?” After a moment, his eyes widened and his face blanched. “Oh no! Secure the scene and I’ll be right there.”
When he looked up, his face was tortured and his eyes were wet. “The bastard got Sherry and two of my patrolmen. Shooter says it looks like a slaughterhouse in there.”
Scofield said, “What about that Hillary James, the reporter?”
“Don’t ask,” said Damon as he hurried from the office, with Matt and Sam close behind.
As Matt turned to close the door, he saw Scofield looking at McGraw with a haunted expression on his face as he told his secretary to send the reporters in.
* * *
Damon screeched to a stop with the hood of his car against the yellow crime scene tape. He flashed his badge and they brushed past two shotgun-wielding patrolmen guarding the door. Matt was temporarily blinded by the flash of the lab men’s cameras. The popping of the flashbulbs and the bluish flashes of light gave the warehouse an odd, surrealistic atmosphere, like an old film noir about vampires—only this was no movie.
Shooter was waiting for them just inside the door. Matt saw two attendants closing the zipper on a black body bag. Damon walked over and put his hand on the shoulder of one of the attendants, leaned over, and unzipped the bag enough to reveal the remains of the patrolman that had been killed.
Feeling guilty at the relief he felt, Matt followed as Damon and Shooter and Sam continued down the corridor. A detective, whose badge identified him as Sergeant Buzz Burkhart, was sitting on a stool with his face in his hands, a blood-splattered sheet at his feet.
“Buzz, any sign of Sherry . . .” Damon began, but stopped when Burkhart looked up with red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes. Shooter slowly stepped over to the sheet and started to pull the corner back.
Burkhart, voice raspy with grief, said, “You don’t want to do that, Shooter. It’d be better . . .” he started, but clamped his lips together and dropped his eyes at the look of fury on Shooter’s face.
Shooter unfolded a corner of the sheet, and Damon gasped as he saw what was left of Sherry. Matt squeezed his eyes shut and took deep breaths through his mouth to keep from throwing up. The blood drained from Sam’s face, but she knelt and began to examine Sherry’s wounds. After a moment, Matt forced himself to look again, vowing to remember Sherry as she had been, not as she was now. Damon knelt and gently caressed her hair as Sam lowered the sheet back into place.
Damon noticed Sherry’s revolver lying next to the body and took a pencil from his pocket and inserted it in the barrel. He sniffed and noted the smell of cordite. Flipping the cylinder open, he saw that all six chambers had been fired. He replaced the pistol and stood, his attention drawn to a corner where more lab men were taking pictures.
Stepping carefully to avoid the already congealing pools of blood around Sherry’s body, they approached the far corner of the building. A uniformed patrolman was standing, watching the lab men, a horrified expression on his face. Shooter grabbed him by the shoulder and whirled him around. “Any sign of the son of a bitch who did this?”
The patrolman gulped twice, answering in a strangled voice, “No, sir. These three are all we found so far.”
Matt glanced at Hillary James’s body lying spread-eagled in the corner, then turned away, his mind having absorbed as much horror as it could at one time.
As the photographer snapped another picture and Sam bent over the body, Matt noticed a reflection of the flashbulb off something underneath the couch near where Sherry lay. He pointed it out to Shooter, who got down on hands and knees and peered under the couch.
After a moment, he looked back over his shoulder and said, “It looks like a minicamera.” With a grunt, he leaned over and fished it out from under the couch, pointing out that it had Hillary James’s name engraved on the side of it.
Although the tape was long finished, the red light on the front of the camera was still on, indicating that it had been recording during whatever had taken place there.
Shooter took a plastic bag from the case of the lab men and placed the camera inside. When Sam stood and indicated she was finished with her examination of Hillary James, they walked back to where Sherry lay. Shooter squatted and placed his hand on hers under the sheet. “Sherry, you were a helluva cop, and I’ll never forget you!”
As they walked out of the warehouse without looking back, Matt thought to himself that he had never seen such a look of desolation as he saw on Shooter’s face. God help the man, or thing, that had caused him to feel this way.