99 Coffins: A Historical Vampire Tale v-2 Page 9

  Good one, Caxton thought. In the barracks of Troop T, the highway patrol, that would have gotten the man a couple of high fives and maybe a free beer. She started to smile and opened her mouth to congratulate him, but when she looked over again he was shivering. She’d stirred up a memory in Glauer that he would have preferred not to visit again. Shit, she thought. In Troop T they had seen worse things almost every day. Traffic fatalities could be bad, really bad, especially when it rained. They had developed a thick skin about it, used gallows humor to cover up how much it shook them. Apparently when you were a cop in a town with zero homicides you didn’t have to grow calluses on your heart.

  They arrived at the hospital a few minutes later. Glauer led her down the stairs and to the morgue, where Garrity’s wife was already waiting for them. She sat in an orange plastic chair in a waiting room on the far side of the autopsy suite. She had a kerchief around her hair and wore sunglasses, probably to hide how puffy her eyes had become with weeping. A forgotten Styrofoam cup of coffee rested on the seat next to her.

  Caxton held her breath before she walked into the waiting room and promised herself that this time she would get it right. She had to be sensitive and understanding, but she couldn’t let those things stop her getting what she needed.

  They didn’t have a course in how to do this at the academy. Maybe they should have. She walked in and crouched down next to the woman and offered her hands. “Hi,” she said, and studied the other woman’s face. She had sandy hair and thin lips and she might have been thirty or forty; Caxton couldn’t say. She had that same pasty complexion that grief gives everyone, a pallor that sadness brings. “I’m Laura Caxton. I work for the state police. I was with your husband last night,” she said. “I want you to know I’m very, very sorry for what happened.”

  “Thank you,” the woman said. She squeezed Caxton’s hands and then let them go. “The doctor here said you had called him and that I couldn’t take Brad’s body until I’d spoken with you. Is there some kind of form to fill out?”

  Caxton shot a glance at Glauer. The local cop stood by the door as if he were guarding it. His eyes did not meet hers. Supposedly he had already told Garrity’s widow why they had come. Clearly he hadn’t been specific enough.

  “Your husband was killed by a vampire,” Caxton said. “There’s a possibility—I’m not really sure how to say this.”

  The woman pulled the sunglasses off her face. Her eyes were bloodshot, but they showed far more composure than Caxton had expected. “Why don’t you just say it, and we’ll worry about my feelings later?”

  Caxton nodded and looked down at her shoes. She had to force herself to meet the woman’s gaze.

  “Vampires have a certain power over their victims. They can call them back from death. It’s not—it’s not something you would want to happen. They come back corrupted, with their souls damaged. They become slaves of the vampire. I’m sure your husband was a strong man, a good man—”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” the woman finally said. Her hands were shaking, but her eyes blazed. “What is it that you want? Will you just tell me?”

  Caxton bit her lip. “Until we cremate his body, he can be forced to come back and serve the vampire.

  We have to burn him, all of him. It’s the only way.”

  The widow’s face turned deathly white. She stared up at Glauer and Caxton waited for her to say something. She didn’t.

  “It’s the only way,” Caxton repeated. “I understand there may be religious reasons you may not want to do this, but—”

  “Bullshit,” the widow said.

  “Helena, she’s not making this up,” Glauer said.

  The woman’s name was Helena. Why hadn’t Caxton even asked? Her cheeks burned, but she knew she had to get the permission before she could move on. “If you’ll just say the word, we’ll take care of all the details.”

  “Mike, this woman is talking about—about—” Helena Garrity stood up suddenly, so suddenly she swayed from side to side. She rushed over to Glauer, who pulled her into a bear hug. She nearly disappeared into the broad expanse of his jacket.

  “Shh,” Glauer said, stroking her hair. The woman collapsed against his chest. “Just say yes.”

  The woman shook her head against Glauer’s chest, but then said yes. Caxton produced the proper form and the woman signed on the appropriate line. A doctor came in and started talking to the widow in low tones. He took the form and shoved it in his pocket.

  Glauer led Caxton back upstairs. He didn’t speak until they were in the parking lot. He put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses, then, and looked away, toward the road. “You’re not really a people person,” he suggested.

  “I’m a cop,” she replied.

  He looked almost surprised. “You think those are two different things?”

  She kept her mouth shut all the way to their next stop—a meeting room at the back of a church. Chief Vicente was there waiting for them, standing at a podium with one of his patrolmen on either side of him.

  They should have been out searching for the vampire’s body, she thought, but she supposed he had his reasons for doing this instead.

  Vicente wanted a press conference. A half-dozen reporters from the Gettysburg Times and other papers around Adams County sat in uncomfortable-looking chairs, while a lone TV crew had set up in the corner, their cables and battery packs in a pile on the floor. They had a pair of floodlights trained on the podium and it looked pretty hot up there. Caxton lingered at the back of the room. The reporters looked back at her, ignoring the chief as he read a prepared statement.

  “The state police in Harrisburg have been good enough to provide us with an expert in just this kind of crime,” Vicente said, and raised one hand to gesture at her. He wanted her to come up and say something, she realized. “I’d like to introduce you to Laura Caxton. Thank you.” He waved at her again.

  She wasn’t sure whether or not to expect applause. When none came she rushed down to the podium and cleared her throat.

  The lights were bright enough to blind her. She held up one hand to cover her eyes and looked out at the reporters. “I don’t have a prepared statement,” she admitted. “Are there any questions?”

  One of the reporters stood up. He was wearing a dark blue blazer, but she couldn’t really see his face.

  “Do you have any leads as to the vampire’s identity?” he asked.

  She shook her head. That didn’t seem to suffice, so she leaned closer to the microphone and said, “No, not at this time. We’re looking into it.”

  Another reporter asked, without getting up, “Can you tell us about the policeman who died last night?

  Did he suffer much, or did he go peacefully?”

  She felt like she was back at school. She felt like she was being quizzed. That one had to be a trick question. “I’m sorry, I can’t comment on that,” she said.

  Over by the television camera a third reporter asked, “Officer Caxton, can you give us some idea of what to expect? Can you outline your plan for catching this creature and what you’re going to do to protect Gettysburg?”

  “I’ve basically just got here and I haven’t had time to create an action plan. We’re still working on that—”

  The reporter held up his hands in disgust. “Can’t you give us any details of your investigation at all?

  What’s your best-case scenario? What should people do?”

  She glanced over at Vicente. His face was very still, as if he were keeping it under perfect control. His shoulders, however, were inching upward toward his ears. He didn’t like her performance.

  Well, so be it, she thought. She certainly had better things to do. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to throw him a bone, though. “Well, I can tell you that everyone should stay indoors tonight. Don’t go out for any reason, not unless it’s a true emergency. Anyone who has a place to go outside of town should do so now, before sunset. I’d urge all the tourists to cut their trips short and go home.”

&n
bsp; Vicente smiled very broadly and started walking back toward the podium, his hands together as if he might start clapping.

  The reporter wasn’t done with her, though. “Are you actually suggesting that Gettysburg should shut down its tourist industry?”

  “Definitely,” she said. “We’re dealing with a vampire. They drink blood. They’ll kill anyone who gets in their way. If I could, I would evacuate the whole town.”

  Even through the haze of light she could see every eye in the room go wide when she said that.

  28.

  I fumed in impatience. Bill had been badly hurt when I’d seen him, perhaps near death. Every minute I delayed my rescue reduced his chances of survival.

  “Now ya hold your horses, Griest. That’s one virtue I’ve learnt, & it has served me well. For a long time I been runnin’ after that Reb, e’er since he sup’rised my company in the Peninsula. He slaughtered a good score of men in their sleep. I was on sentry duty that night or I would have been one of them. When you came runnin’ up I was waiting for him to ride by so I could spill his brains on his own beloved soil by way of thanks. Woulda had ’im, too, if’n I hadn’t wasted my powder on getting yer attention.”

  “Who is this murderer?” I asked.

  “The Ranger Simonon, & about the worst snake the Confederacy ever pulled out of a hole. He’s a sneak killer and a horse thief, of the sort they raise out Bleeding Kansas way. Father Abraham wants him dead as much as I, & by God, I’ll have it so. If I can help yer pal, I will, but not if it means missin’ another shoot.”

  “I aim to go inside, at once,” I said again.

  Storrow placed a hand on my shoulder & squeezed it. “There’s danger in there, y’know. Mortal danger.”

  “You didn’t strike me as cowardly before,” I said.

  The man would have been in his rights to strike me then. Instead he only spit on the ground and said, “I seen a thing come out of there last night I wouldn’t want to meet again. Ya know what I’m jawin’ about?”

  “The vampire,” German Pete barked.

  Storrow looked at the man long & hard & then nodded. “Thought it might be one.”

  “Do you know aught of vampires, then?” I asked.

  His shoulders raised in a shrug. “Precious little. What man does? They’re rare as honest politicians, & I thank Jesus for that. I saw one they caught & killed in Angola town, back in ’53, when I was a boy. They took & laid him out in a warehouse for the public edification. My daddy took us all in for a look, & paid a half-dime for the pleasure. Ugliest critter I ever saw, & it scared me stiff, dead as it was. This one’s still quick.”

  —THE STATEMENT OFALVAGRIEST

  29.

  “He couldn’t get me off that podium fast enough,” Caxton said. She leaned back in the Mazda’s driver seat and rubbed at her eyes. It felt strangely good to talk to Arkeley. She’d never thought she would say that before.

  Calling him had taken some courage. After she left the press conference and Glauer had taken her back to the police station, she had been left all alone in the swirling leaves of the parking lot, with no idea what to do next. Or rather, she knew exactly what needed to be done but she didn’t have time to do it. She should have been out on the streets with the other cops, searching for the vampire. She had only ten minutes, though, before she was supposed to go to her interview with Professor Geistdoerfer. She had considered getting something to eat—it was going to be a long night—but there really wasn’t time. So instead she had taken out her cell phone and called Clara, but she only got the machine.

  She had screwed up, and badly. She knew that. She’d traumatized Garrity’s poor widow and outraged the local media. Vicente had been furious with her after the press conference and she still wasn’t sure why, but she knew it would be a problem. Organizing the manhunt for the vampire was going to be harder than ever.

  The phone in her hand contained Arkeley’s number, she thought. If there was anybody in the world who could give her some decent advice it would be the old Fed. He had actually done this before, stood where she stood, made the decisions she was forced to make. He would be a great source of advice—though never sympathy. She could expect little but scorn for how she’d handled things so far.

  She had opened her phone list and there he was, the first entry. The only person she knew whose name started with A . She had hit the send button before she could stop herself. He was in a truck ferrying Malvern to Philadelphia and the connection had been lousy, but when he answered she had just started talking, ostensibly just updating him as to everything that had happened. When she finished there was silence on the line.

  “Hello, Arkeley? Are you there?” she asked. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” he said, “that if you had consciously planned out how to be bad at this job, you still might have come off better.”

  She shook her head from side to side. It was about what she’d expected. “But what did they want? I just told them what I thought.”

  “That was the last thing they wanted. Press conferences are a very specific variety of bullshit. They serve two functions: to tell people that no matter how dire things might look, it’s not their fault, and that they need take no action at this time.”

  “We have a vampire here!” she said, sounding whiny to her own ears.

  “Yes. The good people of Gettysburg know that. They’re terrified. They wanted you to get up there and tell them that they’re safe and that you’ll clean up the mess for them.” His voice changed, grew more weary. “They just wanted some reassurance. They wanted a symbolic father to tell them everything was going to be alright. It’s why you were welcomed so warmly in the first place. The chief there doesn’t know what to do next and he asked you in so he could pass the buck.”

  “I thought it had more to do with my experience and skills.”

  Arkeley grunted. It almost sounded like a laugh. “Well, you’ve now demonstrated exactly what those skills are worth.”

  She frowned. He couldn’t see it, but it wouldn’t have bothered him anyway. “I don’t remember you having to do any press conferences, last time.”

  “That was only because I bullied my way out of them. Listen, Trooper, I have to go now. We’re nearly at the museum. Maybe I’ll have something for you later—if the bones here really do date to 1863, they must be related in some way to our suspect. I’ll have my phone on me, so keep me posted, please.” He broke the connection without another word. Caxton flipped her phone closed and shoved it in her pocket. Arkeley had been a jerk, as usual, but talking to him had made her feel strangely better. He hadn’t dismissed her from duty or told her to let the local cops handle the case. On some level he still believed she was the right woman for the job.

  The job—she checked her watch and saw she just had time to make her appointment with Geistdoerfer.

  She checked her annotated map of the town and started up the Mazda. It wasn’t far to the college campus—nothing in Gettysburg was very far from anything else—but traffic was thick. It was late, almost sundown, and she cursed the tourists around her as they crawled through green lights and blocked intersections.

  She was heading up Carlisle Street when she realized that the tourists in their cars were headed away from the center of town. Always before, the traffic had flowed toward Lincoln Square. They were leaving the borough, heading out in great flocks. Had her press conference gone out live? Or maybe people were just smart enough to get their kids away from a town haunted by a vampire. She could only hope.

  She pulled into a parking lot near a classroom building and headed inside. The Civil War Era Studies department had classes on the third floor overlooking a student area with a fountain. Through the windows she could see the campus lit up and golden in twilight. It reminded her of her own year and a half in college, a time she’d spent learning who she was, if she hadn’t learned much else. She found the door she wanted and knocked politely, then stepped inside. The classroom was all but deserted, row after
row of black metal chairs lined up facing a whiteboard and a long table littered with books and bags. Three female students—they looked so young to Caxton, who was barely out of her mid-twenties herself—had congregated around a very tall, very striking man who could only be Geistdoerfer.

  “Running Wolf,” they called him, and she finally understood why. He was of average build, but his height made him look lean. He had a sharp nose and sharper eyes, and his head was crowned with a thick shock of silver hair that turned darker in the back. His mustache was thick and bristly, but he didn’t look like one of the Pennsylvania cops she’d seen back at the station. He looked far more distinguished, like some European aristocrat maybe, but with a real streak of wildness. When he spoke to the girls he tilted his head back slightly and looked down at them along his long nose. The gesture didn’t look haughty, however, but almost conspiratorial. He looked as if he were sharing dark secrets with them even as he discussed the topics for their term papers.

  “Professor,” Caxton said. “I hate to interrupt, but—”

  “Trooper, ah, Caxton,” he said airily. “Oh, yes, the police called to say you were coming over. You young ladies had best leave us.” He smiled down at his students and one of them actually giggled. “And do be safe tonight, won’t you? Lock your doors so the beasties don’t get you.”

  The students promised to be good and left, shouldering their bags and giving Caxton a once-over as they passed her. It was only when they were gone that Caxton saw that Geistdoerfer’s arm was in a sling.

  “Shall we go to my office, where we can sit down?”

  “Sure,” Caxton said.

  He started loading books and papers into a satchel with his one good hand. Caxton helped him and somehow ended up carrying the bag as well. He led her down a long hallway that was starting to get gloomy as the sun fell. His office was at the far end, a cozy room lined with books. He sat down behind a big desk piled with student papers while Caxton took a padded chair on the far side. She glanced around, taking in her surroundings, the way any cop would, but the room offered few secrets at first glance. A cavalry saber hung on one wall, its scabbard mounted just beneath it. The blade was polished to a high shine but still spotted with rust.