Blood Red (9 page)

“It's okay. I'm just trying to understand.”

Deanna stopped suddenly, looking around. “It's gone.”

Lauren hesitated. “It?”

“Whatever was watching us.”

“
Who
ever was watching us, you mean.”

Deanna shivered. “No.
Whatever
was watching us.” She stared at Lauren with wide eyes. “It wasn't human. I'm sure of it.”

L
ooking for Stephan's hideout was like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, Mark thought. He might have chosen a basement in a deserted housing complex almost anywhere. Or an old warehouse. Or abandoned industrial park.

Somehow, he had to get a better sense of where his nemesis was making his home base.

His next self-imposed task didn't seem to be any easier.

Mark wasn't at all sure how he was going to gain access to the morgue, and it wouldn't help him in the least if the attendants brought out Polaroids of the deceased or digital images, as was so often the case these days.

He was pretty good at mesmerizing people, and on someone trusting, like innkeeper Lilly Martin, he could almost guarantee success. But at the morgue, there were clerks, assistants, attendants, gurney pushers…all kinds of people to get past.

Luckily, he started out with a young woman in her mid-twenties, a picture of her husband and baby on her desk.

The entire business world knew that confident, direct eye contact brought about the best results. And she was easy to engage. Without telling too many lies, he convinced her that he had an official reason to be there and got her to agree to let him in to see the body that had been pulled from the Mississippi.

As it happened, the remains were in one of the autopsy rooms. Bad luck. But he was able to get into the back, and put on scrubs and a mask. With a clipboard in hand, he moved down the hallway, knowing exactly where he was going.

To his surprise, there was a roadblock. A human roadblock.

Most of the time that would have meant little, but this roadblock was different. It was the cop. Sean Canady.

Canady looked up, saw him and, despite the mask and the scrubs, recognized him instantly.

Hell. Now, there was a chance he would be arrested. Not good.

But Canady only strode down the hallway to greet him.

No sense playing games. “Hello, Lieutenant.”

“Musician and writer, huh?”

“I swear. You should hear me play.”

Canady studied him for a long moment, looking into his eyes.

To Mark's amazement, the cop shrugged. “You feel you need to see the body? Let's go.”

One of the assistant's brought Canady some gloves. He thanked the assistant, then asked, “Who's on?”

“Doc Mordock.”

“Great.”

The autopsy room was like every other one of its kind. Sterile. Tile and paint in soft powder blue. Same smell of death, antiseptics and preservatives. Water running to keep the stainless steel tables as clean and germ-free as possible, and to enable the doctors and technicians to work on human bodies, with all their messy fluids and tissues.

Only one of the gurneys in the room held a form beneath a sheet. A man in scrubs and a mask was standing behind it.

“Sean, hey,” he said.

“Doc Mordock, hi,” Sean replied.

Mordock looked at Mark, a question in his eyes. “Mark Davidson,” Sean said in introduction. “He's seen victims found in a similar situation. He may be able to tell us if we're looking at a killer who has struck elsewhere,” he went on to explain briefly.

“Hey, he's with you. That's good enough for me,” Mordock said as he pulled back the sheet.

There was always something sad and eerie about a naked corpse on a stainless steel gurney. When the head was missing, the effect was intensified.

Mark knew there were things that Mordock could determine from the damage inflicted by the water, and the fish and crustaceans that made the Mississippi their home. He should be able to determine a time and date of death, what she had eaten for her last meal, and much, much more.

None of that mattered to Mark, though he did listen to the conversation between Mordock and Sean Canady.

“You got an ID yet?” Mordock asked.

Canady nodded. “Eloise Dryer. A few petty thefts, soliciting. She's known in a few of the local clubs, but her address is listed as a Houston hole-in-the-wall.”

“So she was a prostitute?” Mark said.

“Most of the time,” Canady told him.

Mark was inspecting the corpse's neck.

“Decapitated with an ax,” Mordock told him. “Postmortem. But it was one clean swipe. I'm willing to bet many a man executed on the block would have given a lot to be killed with such a clean stroke.”

“But she
was
deceased first?” Mark said.

Mordock swept indicated the cut. “Bloodless,” he said.

There
, Mark noted. A puncture mark. Not such a perfect way to hide the evidence after all. “Bloodless,” he repeated, and looked at Canady.

The cop was silent. His face gave away nothing.

“She might have been killed as part of some ritual,” Doc Mordock said. “God knows, there are enough kooks out there.” He stared at Mark. “And I don't mean just in New Orleans. Hell, I was called out to work a case in the back woods of the Midwest, the heart of America, and what those fellows were up to made hardened cops puke. But, yeah, I've seen the mark. Right on the jugular. She was drained like a slaughtered hog.”

“That won't be in the press releases,” Canady said and looked warningly at Mark.

Mark shrugged. “I don't write press releases.”

“But you do write.”

“I won't be writing about this.”

Apparently that satisfied Canady. “Thanks, Mordock. Put anything else you can think of in your report and give it to me as soon as you can. You still don't know where she went into the river?”

“Tech forensics are working on it, ebb and flow, all that,” Mordock told him. “But she hasn't been dead that long. With the current and the river life, well, a body goes to hell pretty quickly when it's in the water. But here's something interesting—whoever tossed her didn't really care whether or not she was found. She wasn't weighted down. She was just dumped in the water.”

Canady thanked the ME again and turned to exit the autopsy room. Mark followed him.

In the hallway, Canady stripped off his gloves, staring at Mark. “Did you get what you were after?”

“Yes. Did you?” Mark, too, stripped off his autopsy-room paraphernalia.

Canady studied him. “Not just one vampire but lots of them, eh?”

Mark said cleared his throat. “She was used for some kind of a blood rite.”

When Sean didn't respond, Mark went on.

“Every cult has some kind of leader, a grand priest, whatever,” Mark said, studying Canady. “I get the impression you've dealt with cults before. That you know what I'm talking about.”

“Come in tomorrow. You can have a sketch artist draw up a likeness of this man Stephan for me.”

“Thanks,” Mark said, then hesitated. Canady seemed to be a decent guy treating him with such apparent respect. But he was afraid for the man, as well. “The thing is…okay, these guys really think they
are
vampires. They go down if they're hit with holy water, and they back away from crosses, and…unless they're planning to make a victim rise from the dead, they cut off the head to keep the population from getting out of control. I'm just worried that your people…”

Canady grinned. “My cops won't know they need to stake the guy, is that it?”

He didn't know if Canady was mocking him or not.

“Yeah, something like that,” he said.

“I'll take care of it. Come by the station tomorrow, Mr. Davidson.”

“Thank you. Um, Lieutenant?”

“Yeah?”

“They may not all be men.”

“Pardon?”

“Vampires. They come in both sexes.”

“Gotcha,” Canady said. “Tomorrow.”

Mark hesitated. “Like I said before, he's hiding out somewhere. He can move about by day, but it's a better time for him to rest.”

“I've warned local law enforcement to be on the lookout,” Sean told him. “And not just in this parish.”

“Oh? Great. Just so long as they understand that they could really be in danger.”

”I know my business,” Canady told him.

“Right. Well, thanks.”

As soon as Mark left the morgue, he hurried back to the bed and breakfast. As he pulled into the lot, he saw that Deanna and Lauren, wearing bathing suits and carrying bags that he assumed held lotions and magazines, were just going into their cottage.

Lock it
, he thought as the door closed behind them.
Lock it! And don't let anyone in….

He decided they were safe enough for the time being and headed back to his car.

Just when the world seemed all nice and normal…

When Deanna and Lauren went into their cottage they found Heidi out of the shower, dressed and on her cell phone. She flashed them a smile and mouthed the word, “Barry.”

They both nodded; then Deanna headed into the shower, and Lauren plopped down on the sofa, turned on the television and found the news.

There was a police officer, a big handsome guy, talking to a sea of reporters, who were all struggling to get their mikes closer to the cop.

“The most important thing for anyone, but especially women, to remember is to use good judgment and common sense,” the cop was saying.

“But the victim was a known prostitute,” one of the reporters called out.

“The victim was a woman,” the policeman said firmly. “And we don't know yet where she was killed. It might have been anywhere along the Mississippi. Folks, this is a great city. We've had our share of trouble, but we always rise back up. Right now, let's assume we're having a problem, so let's handle it intelligently. Go out, have fun. Go to dinner—gamble, if that's your passion, enjoy everything this city has to offer. Stay in groups. Don't go down dark streets on your own. Don't assume that you're safe just because the last victim was a woman or a prostitute, but don't spend your lives hiding, either. There's nothing new about predators. And there's nothing new to guard against them. Being smart is always the best defense.”

The reporters all started shouting questions, speaking over top of each other. The detective lifted a hand. “There's nothing else I can say at the moment, except maybe to add this warning: Don't open your door to strangers.”

“Even tall, good-looking ones, Lieutenant?” one of the female reporters asked with a grin.

“Strangers of any kind, Amy,” the cop said, staring hard at her, his expression grim. He'd been talking about murder and clearly hadn't appreciated her levity.

And that was that. They kept shouting, but he had turned and was walking away, and that was that.

The television went off with a soft ping. Lauren looked up. Heidi had flicked it off with the remote control. “We need to listen to that man,” she said firmly.

“Of course. Smart man,” Lauren said.

Heidi sat down next to her. “You're getting that look that means you're taking all this too much to heart. We
are
going out.”

“Yeah, and we're doing what the officer said.”

“What's that?” Heidi asked, frowning.

“We're sticking together.”

Heidi waved a hand in the air. “Of course. That will be easy.”

Deanna popped out of the bathroom, followed by a cloud of steam. She was in a robe, her make-up bag in her hand. “It's all yours, Lauren.”

“Great. Thanks.” Lauren rose and walked in to take her shower. She was grateful to discover that despite Heidi and Deanna having gone before her, she still had hot water.

Be smart
, the cop had said.

Smart would be getting on a plane and getting the hell away from here.

Heidi and Deanna would never do it.

But Deanna was acting even stranger than she was herself, she thought. Just what was going on? Deanna wasn't given to flights of fancy or weirdness. There were just too many tall, dark-haired men hanging around lately. Mark Davidson, almost devastatingly attractive but scary as hell. Jonas, Deanna's guy.

And then….

It wasn't human
, Deanna had said.

Back up, she told herself. There were often moments when you felt you were being watched. Creepy little moments. There were times when she had been home in L.A. and felt her heart accelerate when she looked out at the darkness and the bushes rustling near her door. Fear was a natural human emotion, or, if not flat out fear, at least unease.

They would go out tonight. They would check out the bars, and they would most definitely stay together.

But the newscast kept replaying in her mind.
Don't open your door to strangers.