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  I reentered her apartment. “Do you have somewhere you could go for tonight?”

  “Yes. I guess.”

  “We can either take you there, or follow you. I'd really suggest you go there, just so you can sleep.

  ” “You believe me?”

  “Got to. I just can't figure out how he got where you saw him.”

  “Do you think one of those rock climbers,” she asked, “could do it? You know, like the guys on TV who go right up a wall?”

  “Possible. I don't do that sort of thing,” I said, grinning, “as you can probably tell. Do you know anybody who does?”

  She shook her head. “But I'm a cocktail waitress on the boat. I'll ask around.”

  By “the boat” she meant the gaming boat moored just down the street. It was called the General Beauregard. “Good. If you find anybody, tell Officer Byng, here, and we can bring him out back and see what he thinks.”

  She nodded.

  “Just check out his teeth first,” I said.

  I went with Byng to take Alicia to a girlfriend's house. Not so much because she was an attractive female and he really should have a chaperone, but because it allowed me to leave the apartment by the front stairs. That mission accomplished, Byng took me back to where I'd left my car. We both got out, and looked over the area behind the stores. There was absolutely nothing that we could say was out of the ordinary in any way. Just some trash cans, a little housekeeping debris, bottled gas canisters, and the like. Nothing else at all, and no sign of a ladder.

  “You look like you're bleedin' to death,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The rust from the ladder. It's all over you.”

  I shined my light on my hands. Sure enough, they were orangeish red with rust. So was the front of my uniform shirt.

  “Cute,” I said. I glanced at Byng, already aware that he'd climbed the same ladder, and I hadn't noticed anything reddish about him. I have a way of soaking up all the dirt and stains for everybody else.

  “You must have rubbed your forehead, too. And your nose.”

  I got a squirt bottle of Windex and a roll of paper toweling from the trunk of my squad car, and did my face and hands. The uniform would have to be washed.

  “Think we have much of a case, Carl?”

  I shrugged. “Not as it stands right now. You know who she described, don't you?”

  “Yeah,” he snorted. “Fuckin' Bela Lugosi.”

  I chuckled. Close enough. “The important part is that she didn't say that. Just described it.”

  “So?”

  “So she didn't have a name for the suspect she described. That's more credible, in a way. You ever know her to do any dope? Something along the lines of acid?”

  “Never heard about her,” he said, “but I'll check. Think she's seein' things?”

  “Don't know. Be kind of quiet about checking up on her. I really think maybe she saw something. I just don't think it was Dracula.”

  He chuckled. “Me, too. Maybe a blackbird or an owl or something…. We got a few young folks who like to dress all in black, and they're a little pale.” He snorted again. “Problem is, they can't fly.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That fang business is weird, you know?”

  “Just a pair of novelty teeth, I guess. He can put 'em in or take 'em out whenever he wants to. If we develop a suspect, shake him down right away. He'll be carrying his teeth in his pocket.”

  We had walked along the conduit, and I'd been staying about three steps back from the edge.

  “Have a problem with heights?” asked Byng conversationally.

  “Sometimes,” I said.

  He shined his light up the back walls of the buildings, to that door into emptiness I'd observed before.

  “Bet you'd just hate to open that one,” he said.

  I looked up, just to oblige. I stared at the peeling white paint of the door.

  “What?”

  “Byng, I'd swear to God that door was covered with black weatherproofing when I got here. I looked at it…. ”

  We checked. There was no material on the ground anywhere near the door. There was nothing in the nearly dry conduit. There was no wind.

  “Guess you're mistaken, Carl.”

  “Yeah.” But I didn't think so. “Think we can get into that building tonight?”

  “I suppose. Why?”

  “I'd like to see if that door opens.”

  We drove around the block, parked, I grabbed my camera, and we just walked in the front door, went up two flights of steps, and were on the third floor. Security in a rural Iowa town isn't too tight. The third floor was gutted, totally unused, and covered with birdlime, rat droppings, and accumulated debris. Dusty? Oh, my. Perfect medium for the footprints we could see leading to and from that damned door. I took photos, with Byng holding my little tape measure as a scale. Then we went to the door. I had Byng do it, but it opened easily. There were two ringbolts, brand new, attached to the outer door frame. They'd been painted black, and bright silver shown through where something had rubbed the paint off.

  “Rope?”

  “I'd bet on it,” I said. I didn't know enough about climbing to be able to guess whether the rope would be a safety feature, or would actually be used to help our suspect traverse the flat wall between the victim's window and this door. Or both. “It must have been useful.”

  “Yeah.”

  “He must have just about reached this door when I came into the alleyway,” I said. “He just froze in the frame. And when I went up the back stairs, I wasn't more than twenty feet from him.”

  “Me, too,” said Byng. “When we went up the ladder.”

  “Good thing we came fast,” I said. “I wonder how close he was to her when she came out the back door. Ten feet or less?”

  “Probably.”

  I got a spooky feeling when I said, “And I'll bet you she didn't hear a noise down below. I'll bet what she heard was him, and she just naturally assumed it was down at ground level.”

  Byng leaned way out the opened door. “Boy, Carl, there ain't much place to grab hold of on that wall. It'd be a mean climb, even with a rope, I think. Well, though, like she said, those crazy rock climbers can find handholds all over the place.” He shone his flashlight out the door, toward Alicia's apartment.

  “Hey, Carl?”

  “What?”

  “I think there's rings in the window frame above Alicia's apartment, too.”

  “Can I take your word for that?”

  “Sure.” He chuckled. “He really musta shit his pants when we came up.”

  “Yeah. Or laughed his ass off watching me go up that ladder.”

  Examination of the floor revealed that the suspect had paced back and forth between the boarded windows at the front and rear of the building. The boards had been pried, and then replaced, so they could be moved aside fairly easily. He was looking at or for something. Maybe us, as we looked for him.

  I shined my flashlight up into the rafters.

  “Whatcha lookin' for, Carl?”

  “Him.”

  “Oh.”

  We were on the way down the stairs when Byng thought of something else.

  “This is gonna sound dumb, Carl, but Alicia's boyfriend had his car keyed by somebody last night. Parked on Main Street, pretty near her apartment door. Scratch on the sidewalk side, bumper to bumper, and deep. He's gonna have to have it repainted.”

  “No shit?”

  “Yeah. You think maybe somebody's watchin' her? Doesn't like her boyfriend going up to her apartment … ”

  Interesting. I couldn't resist. “Maybe he didn't key it. Maybe he fanged it instead?”

  We both chuckled. “Any idea who it was?”

  Byng shook his head. “He said to me, he said, 'I think I know who it was, but I don't want to say until I'm sure.' That's what he said. I asked him twice, but he wouldn't tell me. Said he'd get back to me.”

  “Okay. Well, if you see him, you might sugges
t this dude with the teeth as a possible suspect. After Alicia tells him about tonight, he might be willing to talk.”

  As we left, Byng summed it up. “Son of a bitch,” he said. “I hate these cases that go nowhere.”

  I wish he'd been right.

  TWO

  Friday, October 6, 2000

  12:25

  It was a good day. Bright sunshine in a cloudless blue sky, with the yellow, orange, and red leaves of fall covering the landscape. I was in a very good mood, considering the fact that I was at work.

  I was driving up to Freiberg to meet with Byng, and exercising my prerogative of taking the scenic route along the Mississippi. Byng had telephoned the office earlier and said that he'd been back on the roof and could find nothing. That meant that I wouldn't have to go back up that damned ladder. A very good mood.

  I picked up my mike, and called Byng on our OPS channel. “Twenty-nine, Three.”

  “Go ahead, Three.”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I'm about five out. Want to ten-twenty-five somewhere?” I thought I'd leave where we'd meet up to him.

  “Uh, yeah. Why don't you meet me over at the Conception County Sheriff's Department?”

  Conception County Sheriff's Department was in Jollietville, Wisconsin, just across the river from Freiberg. A large bridge that crossed the Mississippi in two spans joined the towns, and the two states.

  “Ten-four. Be there in a couple of minutes.” Well. A nice, if unexpected, change of plan. I hadn't seen Harry and the Conception County boys in a good month.

  “Ten-four. Got somethin' over here I think you should see. Talk to ya when ya get here.”

  For some reason, I didn't like the sound of that.

  A second later, Sally's voice crackled on the INFO channel. “Comm, Three?”

  I leaned forward, and pressed the second of eight frequency buttons. “Comm, go.”

  “Three, remember the case you had about, oh, four years ago, when you got your car stuck and had to be towed out?”

  Of course I did. It had been at a drowning, where a canoe had turned over, and we were trying to get to the victim in an area without a road.

  “Ten-four, Comm, I do.”

  “They had a similar case in Conception County last night. This might be in reference to that.”

  “Ah, ten-four, Comm.” And I hung up the mike.

  “KQQ 9787, 12:29.” She gave the call letters as a sign she was through transmitting and ready to receive; and the time was given then so that it appeared on the voice recording, just in case her console clock was different from the electronic clock on the recorder.

  I was pretty sure that, if they'd had a drowning in Conception County last night, and Byng wanted me to see it, it was either one of our locals or somebody we had an interest in. You always wonder, and hope it isn't anybody you know personally, and maybe like.

  I was pulling up in front of the Conception County Sheriff's Department about eight minutes later.

  “Comm, Three's out of the car at Conception County.”

  “Ten-four, Three. 12:37.”

  I made a quick note of the time in my log. I had a feeling that it was going to be needed in a report.

  I walked in, and got buzzed through the bulletproof area and into the main part of the office. Byng was standing in the hall, and motioned me back to Investigator Harry Ullman's office.

  “Hey, Houseman,” said Harry, getting up from his desk and extending his hand. “Long time no see!”

  “You got that right, Harry. What's up?”

  He shook his head. “Another fuckin' floater in the river last night. That's seven this year. Called me out in the middle of the damn night.”

  “You wear your life jacket this time?” I asked because Harry had fallen in once, on a recovery a few years back, and nearly drowned himself. He couldn't swim.

  “Always, Carl. You know me.” He picked up an incident report sheet from his desk and handed it to me. “Ring any bells?”

  I scanned the sheet, and the driver's license stapled to it. The deceased was a white male, twenty-four years of age, named Randy Baumhagen. His driver's license indicated he was from Freiberg, Iowa, but I didn't know him. His color photo showed a fairly good-looking young man in a frilled white shirt with black trim. The standard uniform worn by employees of the General Beauregard, the gaming boat moored in Freiberg.

  “Works on the boat,” I said.

  “Worked. You know him?”

  “Nope, just can tell from the shirt.” I grinned at Harry. A small “gotcha,” but it was all part of the game.

  “You must be a detective,” said Harry.

  “I work at it,” I said lightly. “Any reason I really should know him?”

  Harry glanced at Byng. “He thinks so.”

  I looked over at the Freiberg officer, and raised an eyebrow.

  “Remember the car that I told you got scratched? The boyfriend of Alicia from last night?”

  “You're kidding,” I said, without much conviction.

  “Nope. Same kid.” Byng looked almost sad.

  “Well, hell,” I said. “That's a shame.”

  “It gets worse,” said Harry, in his garrulous way. “You're gonna love it.”

  “Oh?” I don't know where Harry got the impression I was as ghoulish as he was. “I don't know, Harry. I'm a sensitive kind of guy.”

  He motioned to his computer monitor, on a side stand near the window. “Take a look at these.”

  I walked over, and watched as he pulled up a series of electronic photos that showed young Baumhagen. The first two were of him floating; facedown, in a pretty shallow area, judging from the vegetation. “Pretty close to shore?”

  “Just above Frenchman's Landing,” said Harry. “Water there's about three-feet deep. Looks like he went right off a floating dock.”

  “He drown?” I asked as Harry brought up a different set of images.

  “Christ,” said Harry, “I hope not. Look here.”

  On the screen was a close-up of the right side of Baumhagen's head. It was just about completely caved in, like he'd fallen from a height and gone into rocks headfirst. That kind of completely. Never happen from a floating dock. He couldn't have fallen more than five feet.

  “That ought to have done it,” I said. “I didn't see any rocks in the other photos. Murder?”

  “You bet,” said Harry. “See, I told you you'd love it. Wait, though, it gets better than this, even.”

  I didn't see how that was going to be possible, but I've learned to trust what Harry says over the years.

  The next series loaded. This time Baumhagen was lying on his back. His neck was a mess.

  “Whoa,” I said. “You don't see that every day. Is that what got him?”

  “Not sure,” said Harry, “but we don't think so. He's in Milwaukee right now, getting autopsied. Great bunch, some of the same people who worked the Dahmer case. Top of the fuckin' line, Carl. Lemme tell ya.”

  “Name dropper.”

  “No, really. Anyway, they tell me that they think the cause of death was the blow to the head, and that the neck was done post mortem.”

  The hole in the neck was pretty large. “Somebody try to remove the head? Or are the turtles just hungrier this year?”

  “The forensics people are just guessing, but they say that it was done with a sharp object, but not a blade. More rounded, like a sharpened pencil, you know? Only probably steel. One of the docs is a farm kid, and he said that it reminded him of the sort of wound you might get from something like a fencing pliers.” Harry looked up from the screen. “You know?”

  I knew. A fencing pliers was kind of a big gripper or snipper, really, with a long, rounded point on one side of the head, so you could slip it under one of the big staples used to hold wire onto a wooden fence post. Heave on the handle, and you pulled the staple out.

  Harry went on. “No damage at all to the cervical vertebrae. Most of the major muscle groups are intact. Just a big fuckin' hole, Carl.�
�

  “This is a little way from usual, isn't it?”

  “You got that right, Carl.”

  “Why do the throat bit?”

  “I told him about last night,” Byng interjected.

  “About the teeth.”

  “Whatcha think, Carl?” asked Harry. “Could a guy do this with his fuckin' teeth?”

  “No way,” I said emphatically. “Never happen. Human can't bite that hard, and fake teeth would be pulled right out of his mouth. Real teeth couldn't do that.” I looked at both of them, in the sudden silence. “Well, that's just an opinion,” I said.

  “I agree,” said Harry. “So do the boys in the ME's office in Milwaukee.” He reached up and patted me on the shoulder. “Not bad for an Iowa boy.”

  It was quiet for another few seconds. “You know, though,” I said, “if you wanted to make somebody think you'd done it with teeth … ”

  Harry chuckled. “And that you'd crushed his fuckin' skull because you got a little eager?”

  “Well, no. Although I sure as hell didn't see any rocks in any of the photos that could have dented his head like that. But … ”

  “I know what ya mean, Carl,” he said. “From what Byng says, it might tie in.” He snorted. “Vampire. Suspect that weird has to be from your side of the river.”

  “I'll tell you what,” I said. “I'll bet the odds are at least fifty-fifty that if we find whatever caused the scratch on that boy's car, we'll find the weapon that did his throat.”

  “That makes sense,” said Harry. He straightened up.