Back in my younger, poorer days, I had a 1983 Chevy Nova. I’d put a lot of miles on that car, and as a result it had its share of mechanical issues. One time it was a leaky radiator that announced itself during a road trip, and the car could only go so far before overheating. When it overheated was guesswork on my part, but I knew inevitably the car would stall, because it wasn’t functioning at full capacity.
That’s how I felt about myself and Phin. We were damaged, and we were going to break down. Just like I shouldn’t have been risking a long journey with my old car, we shouldn’t have been tempting fate by chasing a psychopath.
We simply weren’t up to the task.
But just like my younger self and that clunky car, I refused to let that stop me. Which was problematic. Because I wasn’t only endangering myself. I was endangering my family.
I knew the physical aspect of our diminished capacity was even worse for my husband, who equated testosterone with self-worth. But I was also having cognitive issues.
I wasn’t catching stuff I should have been catching. Clues that would have been obvious to me even before I became lieutenant had been eluding me.
While Phin prided himself in how much he could dead lift and how many people he could beat up, I prided myself in solving cases.
And I felt my mental game was as slow as my physical game.
So the two of us heading into the morgue wasn’t the wisest idea. But down we went, buoyed by pride and stupidity, to find the monster who scared our daughter.
After the elevator spat us out at the basement level of the hospital, Phin wheeled himself out first. I noted he was bleeding through his arm bandages, and I’d also been off my morphine drip for a while and the pain in my arm was making my muddled thought process even more muddled. Because Phin wasn’t moving very fast, Elroy held the door open for me, which was a kind gesture but it also meant the only healthy person among us was heading last into the lion’s den.
Basements in buildings were odd beasts. Windowless, undecorated, and containing all of the ugly utilities needed to supply water, temperature control, and power, they were the perfect setting for horror films. This one was made even creepier by Sam’s harrowing experience, and a flickering overhead light that reminded me of a Halloween haunted house.
“Morgue is around the corner. Funky monkey dunker!”
As we crept along, I asked, “How long have you worked here, Elroy?”
“I just got my five-year bonus.”
“You like it?”
“Yeah. The staff accepts me. No one stares anymore. Tough to fit in, with Tourette’s.”
“Thank you for helping our daughter.”
“No problem. She’s a smart kid. Talking to her was like talking to an adult.”
We’d heard that before. I moved on to my intended question after breaking the ice with small talk.
“Have you heard of the Destiny Drac?”
“Of course. Rumor is she works here at St. Erasmus.”
“She?” Phin asked. “You think it’s a woman?”
“I think it’s an urban legend. Been here half a decade, and I’ve never seen any evidence of anything. And I watch people. It’s a hobby of mine. I know who’s sleeping with who, who’s having problems with relationships or booze or drugs. Never saw anyone drinking blood. But there has been some weird stuff that’s happened.”
“Such as?” I asked.
“Well, I’m the custodian. I know when I lock doors. But sometimes doors I locked, I find them unlocked. Like the morgue. Your daughter shouldn’t have been able to get in there. Should have been locked.”
“Are there extra sets of keys?”
“A few people have them. But why would someone who thinks they’re a vampire go into the mortuary? Corpses don’t have fresh blood. It pools up and coagulates.”
“Lividity,” I said.
“Yeah. Can’t drink gooey old blood.”
“Is that the only weird thing?” I asked.
“Well, every so often people talk about blood disappearing from the blood bank.”
That was one helluva red flag. “And you don’t think that’s related?”
“I think it’s absolutely related. I think someone is pranking the hospital to keep the rumors going.”
“Would a prankster impersonate a police officer and then hide in the morgue hoping to scare whoever came in?”
Elroy shrugged. “They might. For the lulz. Or the views. Could be for some social media video.”
I wasn’t buying it. Elroy stopped, and I’d noticed we’d reached our destination. Sooner than I’d expected. Sooner than I’d wanted.
“Funky monkey dunkers!” Elroy’s face twitched. “I could get in big trouble letting you in here, so I’m going to stand guard at the door.”
“Thanks.”
Phin rolled in ahead of me. I followed, my nose crinkling at the familiar odor.
While there were some aspects of policework I missed, visiting the morgue wasn’t one of them. The older I got, the less I wanted to be confronted by the inevitability of my own mortality. Especially now that I had a kid.
“What do we do?” Phin asked. “Start opening these refrigerator doors?”
My eyes darted to a dry erase board on the wall, filled with printed names. I quickly spotted Rita and Larold Goodall, and approached Larold’s with a bit of hesitation. I didn’t want to see this man again, even dead. He’d put my family through a lot.
But even though part of me resisted, the more insistent part of me yanked open the handle and peeked inside, the flashlight on my cell phone illuminating—
—an empty drawer.
“Could the funeral director have picked him up?” Phin asked.
I checked the dry erase board again. They’d both been autopsied, and unless their bodies were claimed by a relative, they’d be taken to the nearest crematorium and disposed of, usually within a day or two. But the morgue was full, and I’d heard Covid-19 was causing a backlog of cremations.
“If the bodies were removed, they’d be taken off the board,” I said.
“Obviously the body was removed.”
“But we don’t know who removed it.”
I checked Rita’s vault. Also empty. But the stainless steel shelf was glossy with fluids.
On a hunch, I tugged the drawer out to its full length, then went to a supply cabinet and searched for the obligatory black light, often used in the autopsies of crime victims.
I found a hand wand, pressed the power button to check the battery strength, and when it glowed faint blue I searched for a room light switch. Finding one on the near wall, I directed Phin to turn it off.
No longer competing with the overhead fluorescents, the faint blue light became an eerie purple glow, illuminating a halo around me. I waved it over the shelf were Rita had been stored.
There were some glowing specks at the near end, and some splotches at the mid-point.
“What are we looking at?” Phin asked. “Blood?”
“Blood only fluoresces with Luminol. But there are three other bodily fluids that glow under black light like this. Urine, but the spatter patterns don’t match.”
“Do I want to know what the other two are?”
“At the top here, I think it’s saliva.”
“Sam was right. Fake Detective Kertis was eating her. And I can guess what the other glow is.”
I confirmed his guess. “Semen.”
For the sake of being thorough, I also ran the black light over Larold’s drawer. Nothing glowed.
“Put the lights back on.”
When Phin did, he questioned whether we should check the other coolers. “Maybe someone switched the bodies.”
“Covid deaths. You want to start opening fridges?”
“Probably not. What’s our next move? Call the police?”
“And say what? That the bodies of two mass murderers are missing? No one is going to put out an APB on a corpse. Plus, do you want to make Sam describe what happened to her, over and over?”
“Can’t they send in some lab rats, swab the blood and semen? Get DNA?”
“DNA is important when there is a suspect to match it to. But what’s the crime here? I don’t know the criminal code in Colorado, but I don’t think they send out a crime scene team for boinking a corpse.”
“And cannibalism isn’t a crime,” Phin said. “Larold taught me that one.”
“Fake Kertis wanted us to investigate the Destiny Drac. All the evidence points to him being Blood. He must have wanted to see how much we knew. See if he’d left any evidence or trails behind that would lead to him.”
“And now we have a path that leads right to him,” Phin said. “Our daughter.”
I chewed my lower lip. “Yeah. But we don’t know who he is. And even if we get an ID, what crimes has he committed? The cases against Blood, most of them are from years ago. The Colorado statute of limitations on assault and battery is three years. Blood couldn’t even be tried for those.”
“So why would Blood even get in touch with us? Why risk us figuring out who he is?”
“That’s a good question. A person who sneaks into houses to drug people and drink their blood is someone who wants to avoid confrontation. Fake Kertis was full-on confrontational.” I closed my eyes, trying to tune into my instincts. “Also, drinking blood and cannibalism are two different things. Using an IV on a sleeping victim to steal a pint of blood is a much different MO than raping a dead body and eating her face.”
“You’re thinking that there is more than one perp?” Phin asked.
“When Harry and I were in those bags, and Blood was bleeding us, they seemed under control. Almost serene. But then we got beaten with a bat.”
“So it’s two different people.”
I frowned. “Maybe. Or maybe, for the first time ever, we’ve got an actual case of split personality disorder.”
“Like Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll,” Phin said.
“Yeah. Except in this case it would be Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde… both of them monsters.”