It was late afternoon by the time Carrie Norton and Max Slattery reached the George Washington Bridge and crossed the Hudson River into Manhattan. With Max behind the wheel, Carrie had worked her cell phone almost constantly from the moment they left Betsy Arnot’s comfortable little house on the pine-covered hill above the old cemetery. When she wasn’t on the phone she was poring over the transcript of Kate Warne’s journal given to her by the elderly researcher. At a pit stop on the New Jersey Turnpike, Max had made a few calls of his own; one to Diddy giving him explicit instructions about the loft on Lispenard Street, and several others to some well-placed friends in the NYPD.
The storm that had broken upstate had followed them back to the city, and the skyline of New York was a stewing mass of brooding clouds and flickering bolts of lightning. They came off the far side of the bridge and took the off-ramp onto the Henry Hudson Parkway.
“I sure as hell hope you’re right about this theory of yours,” said the grizzled policeman as he drove south down the rain-drenched highway. “We will be in some serious doo-doo if you’re not.”
“In scientific terms it’s not actually a theory,” said Carrie. “It’s more of a loose hypothesis based on some unsubstantiated information.”
“In other words it’s just so much bullshit,” said Max with a sigh.
“That about sums it up.”
“I’m starving,” said Max.
“Why am I not surprised?” answered Carrie. “You only had a dozen of those Toll House cookies.”
“That was then; this is now.” He took his cell phone off the dashboard, flipped it open with one hand and hit one of the speed-dial buttons. “Diddy? Nancy Whiskey’s. Twenty minutes.”
Carrie sighed; she could feel her coronary arteries puckering up and shaking their capillaries in horror at the consequences of another bacon cheeseburger with fries and onion rings. Why did bad food taste so good and good food taste so…boring?
“Fat,” said Max firmly. Carrie suddenly realized that she’d spoken out loud. “The human brain is programmed to love fatty foods because back in Stone Age times that’s what got you through the winter. Fat. That’s why vegetarianism is against the laws of nature. If we were meant to eat nothing but vegetables, we wouldn’t have incisors and we’d have four stomachs like a cow.”
“Speaking of incisors,” began Carrie, “what do you really think about Betsy Arnot and her vampire theory? It’s crazy, right?”
“I know some people believe they’re vampires.” Max shrugged. “I’ve actually met a few of them. There’s even an organization called Real Vampires of New Jersey.”
“No,” said Carrie. “Tell me it isn’t so.”
“God’s truth. Ever since Anne Rice wrote that book of hers, they’ve been everywhere.”
“We’re talking about something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago. There was no goth club scene back then.”
“According to Dr. Morricone, the weird professor at Columbia, there was a serial killer loose in New York back in 1863.”
“Named Adam Worth,” said Carrie.
“Who Kate Warne, this Pinkerton lady, and her crazy friend with the weird name…”
“Echo Van Helsing.”
“That’s the one. She thought the serial killer was a vampire. Jeffrey Dahmer was a monster, Ed Gein was a monster, so was Ted Bundy and all the rest. It’s semantics. Today’s monster is yesterday’s vampire. This guy back in the Civil War ripped people’s throats out, so he’s a vampire. If Jack the Ripper had ripped throats out instead of amputating women’s private parts they would have called him a vampire too, I’ll bet.”
“So you don’t believe any of it?”
“I believe that they believed, and I believe that someone’s been re-creating the identical crimes in the present day.”
“Why?”
“These guys need a motive? They’re nut jobs. They do things because little green men with rabbit-ear antennas on their heads whisper in their ears. The Angel of Death is their buddy. In the Son of Sam case, Berkowitz thought he was getting orders from a demon-possessed Labrador retriever named Harvey.”
“I wonder,” said Carrie. “Maybe Adam Worth was a psycho, but the killings now seem too well planned and methodical, as though they had a reason, not to mention LinCorp’s reaction to all of this.”
“Love, lust, lucre and loathing,” said Max.
“What’s that?”
“Something I read in a book once. The four basic motives for murder: passion, sex, money and anger. I’ve been doing this for a long time, Trixie, and I know whereof I speak. The easiest murders to solve are the ones involving anger or sex. Wife picks up a five iron and clubs her husband to death because he’s screwing around. Husband uses a five iron to club his wife because he wants to marry his mistress. Jealousy, screwing around, revenge, they all fit into that slot. The other big one is money.”
“LinCorp?”
“That would be my bet. That’s what Henry Todd Lincoln is all about, so it stands to reason. Somebody’s trying to make trouble for him. The murders and the body in the bog are the key, and five will get you ten that our man knows the reason why.”
They turned off the West Side Highway at Canal Street and a few minutes later Max pulled the rental into a no-parking zone in front of one of the post office buildings. He clipped his laminated NYPD ON DUTY pass on the rearview mirror and they headed into Nancy Whiskey’s on the corner.
As usual the bar was packed. This time the music on the PA was “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place to Be.”
“Lot of AC/DC,” Max commented.
“Goes with the vampires,” said Carrie. Max ordered a bacon cheeseburger with fries and onion rings along with a pitcher of Budweiser. Carrie settled for a BLT, no fries, and a Magners cider.
“Not hungry?” Max asked.
“Not suicidal,” said Carrie. A few minutes later the food arrived and so did Diddy. He joined them at their table and ordered a Diet Coke to keep them company.
“Well?” Max asked, biting into his burger. Things dripped down onto his plate in a gooey mess.
“I did everything you asked,” said the young cop, staring briefly at the mess on Slattery’s plate. “Took a can of Krylon and sprayed over all the cameras, pulled out every microphone that I could find, pulled out the phone lines and unplugged all the computers. I went out and picked up a couple of HP laptops with WiFi hookups. You can either use your cell or ride the signal from the new Starbucks around the corner. I already checked and I’m getting a pretty good signal.”
“How long ago was this?” Max asked.
“Hour, hour and a half.”
“Caught with Your Pants Down” from the Ball-breaker album started wailing out of the speakers.
“Any minute now, then.” Max grinned. He popped an onion ring into his mouth. His cell phone started thrumming its way across the table in vibrate mode. “Speak of the devil.” He let it ring its way to the edge of the table, swallowed the onion ring, then scooped up the phone before it dropped onto the floor. He flipped it open. “Slattery.” He listened for a moment, his smile growing. “You bet,” he said finally, and closed the phone. He picked up another onion ring.
“Well?” Carrie said.
Max chomped down on the onion ring. “Officer Diddy here got their attention,” he said, chewing. “We have an audience with Mr. Lincoln. 740 Park Avenue.”
Diddy snapped his fingers, grinning. “We goin’ uptown!”