Rogue Angel 53: Bathed in Blood (9 page)

“Sounds like a plan, my dear. Take care!”

Annja said goodbye and hung up the phone.

Curiouser and curiouser.

14

After her conversation with Tamás earlier that morning and her complete lack of progress in finding anyone who would talk to her that afternoon, Annja knew she had no choice but to make the rendezvous with Novack. The photograph he’d given her hinted at the possibility that Vass’s death wasn’t an isolated killing. If that was true, as horrible as that reality might be, it was potentially good news for Csilla. If Annja could establish a link between the killings and show that Csilla was back in her native Hungary at the time of at least one, if not more, of the other murders, then Tamás would have no choice but to let her go.

Unless he claimed she had accomplices.

Annja shook off the thought.

Even
he
wouldn’t be that ridiculous, would he?

At the moment it didn’t matter. First, she needed to determine if there had been any other killings. She’d worry about linking them together, as well as proving Csilla’s innocence, after that.

She grabbed some dinner in a restaurant catering to tourists who’d come to see the castle and asked again about Vass and Polgár. While the staff spoke excellent English and were happy enough to chat with her, the answer was still the same. Not only had no one seen them together, but they hadn’t seen either woman at any time. It was as if the two women had never reached Čachtice at all.

Annja paid the bill, including a decent tip, and lingered over coffee, her thoughts churning.

After a moment she borrowed a pen from a passing waiter and drew a rough sketch of the company logo she’d seen on the technician’s lab coat earlier that afternoon. When she was satisfied, she took out her phone, snapped a photo and emailed it to Doug in New York.

Once she confirmed that the file had been sent properly, she dialed his number. It was 6:00 p.m. in Čachtice, which made it around noon in New York City, but she got his voice mail anyway.

She didn’t waste time with pleasantries. “Just sent you an image, Doug. I need you to put the research staff to work. Ask them to figure out which company it belongs to and send me everything they can find on the company itself. I think that company is connected to what’s going on over here. Call me when you have something.”

The “research staff” was nothing more than a pair of interns, but they were eager to please and would hunt down that logo faster than she could. She’d been stretching the truth when she’d told Doug the company was connected to her investigation into Vass’s death. Right now it was nothing more than an anomaly—if she could even call it that—but her instincts were telling her something fishy was going on with that so-called study. Henry had confirmed that the university wasn’t involved, which meant Stone, if that was even her name, had been lying.

It wasn’t a crime to stretch the truth, Annja thought with a wry smile. She’d just done the very same thing, but taking blood samples under false pretenses was another matter entirely. And Annja had lied to Doug for a good reason; he wouldn’t have asked the interns to dig up the information if Annja had simply said she was curious. But Stone had no valid reason—at least none that Annja could think of—to lie about what the medical team was doing.

Annja didn’t like being lied to. It made her sink her teeth in like a bulldog and she wouldn’t let go until she had the answers she was looking for. Stone’s operation might not have anything to do with the weirdness surrounding the investigation into Vass’s death, but given her limited number of leads, anything unusual was fair game at the moment.

A glance at her watch told her it was time to head to her rendezvous with Novack. She’d passed the church where they planned to meet during her canvassing that afternoon, so it was a simple matter to drive over and park around the corner. She sat in the car watching the road behind her for a few moments to be certain she wasn’t being followed. Then she got out, locked the vehicle and walked down the street at a leisurely pace.

The church was an old stone affair half-covered in creeping ivy. A small rectory stood at the back of the property, just visible from the street. A dim light burned over the front door, as if welcoming her with reluctance.

Annja strode up the walk, pushed open the heavy wooden door and slipped inside.

Candles burned at strategic locations throughout the interior, casting a soft light over the simple wooden pews and stone altar. She looked around but didn’t see anyone.

Had she beaten him here?

Rather than stand around in the entrance and look conspicuous should a priest or parishioner come in after her, Annja strode down the center aisle and took a seat a third of the way toward the front. She had barely settled into place before Novack slipped out of the shadows off to one side of the nave and slid into the pew behind her.

“Did anyone see you come in?” he asked.

Annja shook her head. “Not that I’m aware of.”

“Good.” Novack was silent for a moment and then asked, “What did you think of the photograph?”

Annja was decidedly curious about where it had come from and why he’d given it to her, but she wasn’t going to admit it. Not yet.

Instead of answering, she asked a question of her own. “I asked this before and I’ll ask again—who are you? Why are you bringing this information to me?”

Novack glanced around just as he had in the bar, though who he thought would be spying on them in an empty church Annja didn’t know. Apparently satisfied, he faced her, took a deep breath and said, “My name is Havel Novack and I’m a former senior sergeant in the Criminal Police.”

That explained how he’d gotten the photograph.

“Former?”

His jaw tightened, but his voice was calm and steady as he gestured at his leg and said, “I was asked to retire after my injury.”

There was some bitterness there, but nothing to cause concern. She could rule out vindictiveness against his former comrades as a reason he might be meeting with her.

Novack went on, “Before leaving the department I took certain...precautions. Doing so has allowed me to continue my investigation despite the attempts to cut me off.”

This was starting to sound like one of those bizarre conspiracy theories. With just the hint of a rueful smile cresting her lips, Annja asked, “And what investigation is that?”

“The systematic deaths of twenty-three young women over the past five years.”

Annja’s smirk disappeared.

Twenty-three?

“Do you see now why I asked you to be careful?” Novack said.

Annja barely heard the question. She was still trying to get her head around twenty-three murders. In five years? They were talking about a murder every two to three months.

“So many? Tell me you’re exaggerating.”

“I assure you I am not. There may even be more.”

Annja had suspected something was going on, but this was way beyond anything she’d imagined. Twenty-three.

“Why bring this to me?” she asked. “I’m not a cop or a private investigator.”

“No, you’re one better. You’re a seeker of the truth. I can see it in you. You won’t rest until the answers are laid out before you.”

She didn’t know about Novack’s claim that he could “see” her drive to find the truth, but she had to agree with his assessment. Now that she was involved in this whole mess, she would see it through to the end.

“All right, I’m listening,” she told him.

“Twenty-three murders. All of them young, good-looking women in their twenties and thirties. In the beginning there were months between them. Sometimes as many as six to eight. Lately, however, they are coming more steadily. The last three have only been a month apart.”

Annja knew that serial killers often fell victim to their own need, murdering victims more frequently until, in their own haste, they made a mistake and wound up caught by the authorities. Some psychologists theorized that the killers’ own subconscious guilt drove them to such frenzied lengths, but Annja wasn’t convinced. She thought it was a much simpler emotion than guilt—good old-fashioned greed.

One could argue that Báthory had brought about her own downfall by taking one too many victims. It made sense that a killer using Báthory’s legend as a basis for his—or her—crimes would do the same.

And yet...something wasn’t right. Twenty-three murders in the same area should have raised a huge outcry. The police should have been all over this, with a multidisciplinary task force assigned to handle the investigation. When Annja had brought the latest victim into the hospital, they should have immediately put two and two together. They hadn’t. Just the opposite, in fact.

“If there have been twenty-three murders in the past five years, why are the police acting as if this latest one is an isolated incident?” she asked.

“Because this is the first time the victim was someone who actually mattered. At least to the authorities.”

Annja stared at him, not understanding. “Come again?”

Novack handed Annja a file filled with case summaries for each of the twenty-three alleged victims, including color photographs. She began leafing through the documents, and it didn’t take long for her to understand what her companion was talking about.

The “murders” were actually a collection of suicides, accidental deaths and missing persons. Many of the women were noted as being on the fringes of society—prostitutes, known drug users, runaways and the like—and their absence had either been reluctantly reported to the police weeks after they’d dropped out of sight or hadn’t been officially reported at all. Many of the disappearances had been uncovered by Novack while talking to others on the street. The handful that weren’t from the fringes were loners by nature and could just as easily have packed up and moved on without telling anyone where they were going.

She looked up, confused. “These aren’t murders. Why are you wasting my time with this?” she asked.

Novack didn’t bat an eye. “Ignore the reports. They’re worthless. Look at the photographs instead.”

Annja pulled several of them out of the file. “What do you expect me to...?”

The file contained two sets of images. The first were crime scene photos, like the one Novack had given her the night before. The second set was a haphazard collection of images—most likely cobbled together by Novack himself from arrest records, CCTV cameras and photos supplied by relatives—that showed the victims as they’d been before they’d died. It was these images that caused Annja’s comment to die in her throat. The hair on the back of her neck stood at attention.

All the women looked remarkably similar.

They could have been cousins, Annja thought. In some cases even sisters.

They had narrow faces and expressive eyes, with clear skin and healthy-looking hair. The hairstyles themselves were all different—some wore their hair long, as Annja did, while others had cut theirs considerably shorter, and one even had a crew cut—but their features were remarkably similar.

Annja knew it was a long shot, but she asked the obvious question anyway.

“Are they related?”

“No.”

She looked up from the photos. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. I did the research myself.”

“They all look far too similar for this to be a coincidence,” Annja told him.

Novack nodded. “I agree.”

“What do the police say?”

“They disagree with me.”

“Then you need to go back and try again. Get them to listen to you.”

“I tried. Several times, in fact. Shortly after my last attempt I was brought into the captain’s office and told that I was, without argument, going to announce my retirement for medical reasons.”

That must have been both humiliating and painful.

“But honestly, my forced retirement isn’t what’s got me worried.”

The conversation was starting to feel surreal. “Twenty-three possible killings aren’t enough?”

“No. It’s what the killer’s doing afterward. At least three of the bodies—maybe more—were drained of their blood.”

Annja looked up slowly. “You mean the victims bled out, don’t you?” she asked, just to be sure.

Novack shook his head. “No, I mean drained. As in all of it. If I was the superstitious type I’d say that Báthory had come back from the dead.”

The image of those two unusual wounds on Marta’s leg flashed through Annja’s mind.

“The medical examiner’s report noted that the latest victim had several deep cuts along her torso, from which she could have bled extensively, but she also had two puncture wounds on her inner thigh near the femoral artery.”

The former senior sergeant watched her closely as he asked, “How do you know what the autopsy report says?”

This time it was Annja’s turn to shake her head. “That’s not important right now. Just tell me if any of the other bodies had the same kind of injuries.”

He nodded. “Two that I know of.”

That was all?

“You’re sure there aren’t others? Were the injuries noted in the autopsy reports?”

“I didn’t see those reports—I was already retired by the time these two victims turned up. But I know the injuries were there.”

Annja was skeptical. “How could you if you didn’t see the reports?”

He hesitated, as if reluctant to answer, but finally said, “I sneaked into the morgue and examined the bodies before they were sent off to the undertaker.”

Annja laughed; she couldn’t help it. Apparently she’d found a kindred spirit.

Novack frowned, misunderstanding. “I have a man on the inside who’s been helping me, but he couldn’t get to the reports without being discovered, so I did what I had to do.”

She shook her head. “I’m not criticizing,” she told him. “Far from it. I was laughing because I would have done the exact same thing in your position.”

He didn’t look all that mollified, but at least he let it go.

“Did you see any of the earlier bodies?”

“A few. On the cases I was assigned to, at least. I don’t remember seeing anything like what you described, however. If there had been injuries like that, the medical examiner, Petrova, would have discovered them.”

“Unless he’s part of the cover-up.”

Even as she said it, she knew it couldn’t be that simple. Too many people would have seen those reports. Petrova wouldn’t have been foolish enough to hide the presence of such wounds in the other twenty-two alleged victims only to list them so blatantly on the autopsy report for the twenty-third.