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  Dos Santos snorted. “Pretty bad? They broke two ribs, broke my arm. They knocked me down ’bout six times. Fortunately, they knocked me right down a goddamn hill—side of a mountain, actually. I started rolling. Got up. Ran my ass off.”

  “The initial report said that you didn’t see either of them very well. Then you claimed that they were in their forties or fifties.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. It was foggy. That’s an impression I had. Earlier that night, I went to the Fang Club on West Pico. It’s the only place where you can meet real vampires and live to tell about it. So they say. I was going to a lot of Goth clubs back then—Stigmata, Coven Thirteen, Vampiricus over in Long Beach. I worked at Necromane. What’s Necromane?” she asked, as if it were a question we would want answered. She was right. “Necromane is a boutique for people who are really into the dead. You can buy real human skulls there. Fingers, toes. A full human skeleton if that’s your thing.”

  “It’s not,” Jamilla said. “But I’ve been to a shop like that in San Francisco. It’s called the Coroner.”

  The girl looked at her contemptuously. “So I’m fucking impressed? You must be very cool. You must live right on the edge.”

  I spoke again. “We’re trying to help you. We—”

  She cut me off. “Bullshit. You’re trying to help yourselves. You’ve got another big case. Those kinky murders in San Francisco, right? I can read, man. You could care less about Gloria Dos Santos and her problems. I got lots of them. More than you know. Who gives a shit, right?”

  “Two people were killed in Golden Gate Park. It was a massacre. Did you read that? We think it might be the same men who attacked you,” I told her.

  “Yeah, well, let me tell you something you better get straight. The two men who attacked me were vampires! Got that? I know this is impossible for you to wrap your little minds around, but there are vampires. They set themselves apart from the human world. That means they aren’t like you!

  “Two of them almost killed me. They were hunting in Beverly Hills. They kill people every fucking day in L.A.! They drink their blood. They call it feeding. They chew on their bones like it’s KFP—that’s Kentucky Fried People, chumps. I can see you don’t believe me. Well, believe me.”

  The door to the interview room opened quietly. A uniformed patrolman popped in and whispered something to Detective Kim.

  Kim frowned and looked at us, then at Dos Santos. “There was a killing on Sunset Boulevard a short time ago. Someone was bitten and then hanged at one of the better hotels.”

  Gloria Dos Santos’s face twisted horribly. Her eyes grew small and very angry. She flew into a rage, started to scream at the top of her voice. “They followed you here, you assholes! Don’t you get it? They followed you! Oh, my God, they know I talked to you. Oh, Jesus Christ, they’ll get me. You just got me killed!”

  Part Two

  BLOOD LUST

  Chapter 22

  I ALWAYS liked working tough murder cases with Kyle Craig, so I was glad that he would be joining Jamilla Hughes and me in Los Angeles later that day. I was surprised, however, when I saw Kyle already at the murder scene in Beverly Hills when we arrived. The body had been found at the Chateau Marmont, the hotel where John Belushi had overdosed and died.

  The hotel looked like a French castle and rose seven stories over the Sunset Strip. As I entered the lobby, I noticed that everything looked to be authentic 1920s, but dated rather than antique. Supposedly a studio boss once told the actor William Holden, “If you have to get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont.”

  Kyle met us at the door of the hotel room. His dark hair was slicked back, and it looked as if he’d gotten a little sun. Unusual for Kyle. I almost didn’t recognize him.

  “This is Kyle Craig, FBI,” I told Jamilla. “Before I met you, he was the best homicide investigator I ever worked with.”

  Kyle and Jamilla shook hands. Then we followed him into the hotel room. Actually, it was a hillside bungalow: two bedrooms, a living room with a working fireplace. It had its own private street entrance.

  The crime scene was as depressingly bad as the others. I recalled something typically pessimistic that a philosopher had written. I’d once had this same thought at a grisly crime scene in North Carolina: “Human existence must be a kind of error. It is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens.” My own philosophy was a little cheerier than Schopenhauer’s, but there were times when he seemed on the mark.

  The worst of all had happened to a twenty-nine-year-old record company executive named Jonathan Mueller, and in the worst possible way. There were bites on his neck. I didn’t see any knife cuts. Mueller had been hung from a lighting fixture in the hotel room. His skin was waxy and translucent, and I didn’t think he had been dead very long.

  The three of us moved closer to the hanging body. It was swaying slightly and still dripping blood.

  “The major bites are all in his neck,” I said. “It looks like role-playing vampires again. The hanging has to be their ritual, maybe their signature.”

  “This is so goddamn creepy,” Jamilla whispered. “This poor guy had the blood sucked out of him. It almost looks like a sex crime.”

  “I think it is,” Kyle said. “I think they seduced him first.”

  Just then the cell phone in the pocket of my jacket went off. The timing couldn’t have been worse.

  I looked at Kyle before I answered the call. “It could be him,” I said. “The Mastermind.”

  I put the receiver to my ear.

  “How do you like L.A., Alex?” the Mastermind asked in his usual mechanical drone. “The dead pretty much look the same everywhere, don’t they?”

  I nodded at Kyle. He understood who was on the line. The Mastermind.

  He motioned for me to give him the phone, and I handed it over. I watched his face as he listened, then frowned deeply. Kyle finally took the phone away from his ear.

  “He broke off the connection,” he said. “It was like he knew you weren’t on the line anymore. How did he know, Alex? How does the bastard know so much? What the hell does he want from you?”

  I stared at the slowly revolving corpse, and I didn’t have any answers. None at all. I felt drained myself.

  Chapter 23

  IT WAS already Friday and we were in the middle of a nasty, sordid mess that wasn’t going to be over soon. In the afternoon I had to make a tough phone call home to Washington. Nana Mama answered after a couple of rings, and I immediately wished that one of the kids had picked up instead.

  “It’s Alex. How are you?”

  She said, “You’re not coming home for Damon’s concert tomorrow, are you, Alex? Or did you forget all about the concert already? Oh, Alex, Alex. Why have you forsaken us? This isn’t right.”

  I love Nana tremendously, but sometimes she goes too far to make her point. “Why don’t you put Damon on the phone?” I said. “I’ll talk to him about it.”

  “He’s not going to be a boy for very much longer. Pretty soon he’ll be just like you, won’t listen to a word anybody says. Then you’ll see what it’s like. I guarantee you won’t like it,” she said.

  “I feel bad enough already, guilty enough. You don’t have to make it worse, old woman.”

  “Of course I do. That’s my job, and I take it as seriously as you obviously take yours,” she said.

  “Nana, people are dying out here. Someone died a horrible death in Washington to get me involved in this mess. It keeps happening. There’s a connection I have to find, or at least try to.”

  “Yes, people are dying, Alex. I understand that. And other people are growing up without their father around as much as they need him to be—especially since they don’t have a mother. Are you aware of that? I can’t be mother and father to these children.”

  I shut my eyes. “I hear what you’re saying. I don’t even disagree with you, believe it or not. Now, would you please put Damon on?” I asked again. “As soon as I get off t
he phone, I’ll go out and see if I can find a mother for my children. Actually, I’m working with a very nice female detective. You’d like her.”

  “Damon’s not here. He said if you called and weren’t coming home to tell you thanks a lot.”

  I shook my head and finally smiled in spite of myself. “You got his inflection down perfectly. Where is he?”

  “He’s playing basketball with his friends. He’s very good at that too. I think he’ll be an outstanding two guard. Have you even noticed?”

  “He has soft hands and a quick first step. Of course I’ve noticed. You know which friends he’s out with?”

  “Of course I do. Do you?” Nana shot back. She was relentless when she was on the attack. “He’s with Louis and Jamal. He picks good friends.”

  “I have to go now, Nana. Please give Damon and Jannie my love. Give little Alex a big hug.”

  “Alex, you give them love and hugs yourself,” she said. Then she hung up on me. She had never done that before. Well, she hadn’t done it very often.

  I sat there, pinned to my chair, thinking over what had just been said, wondering whether or not I was guilty as charged. I knew that I spent more time with the kids than a lot of fathers, but as Nana had so skillfully argued, they were growing up fast, and without a mother. I had to do an even better job, and there were no goddamn excuses.

  I called home a few more times. There was no answer, and I figured I was being punished. I finally caught up with Damon around six that night. He had just gotten home from a rehearsal for his concert with the Boys’ Choir. I heard his voice come on the line, and I sang a little Tupac rap ditty he likes.

  He thought that was funny, so I knew everything was okay. He had forgiven me. He’s a good boy, the best I could have hoped for. I suddenly remembered my wife, Maria, and was sad that she wasn’t here to see how well Damon was turning out. You would really like Damon, Maria. I’m sorry you’re missing it.

  “I got your message. I’m sorry, Damon. I wish I were going to hear you tomorrow. You know I do. Can’t be helped, buddy.”

  Damon sighed dramatically. “If wishes had wings,” he said. It was one of his grandmother’s pet sayings. I had been hearing it for years, ever since I was around his age.

  “Beat me, whip me, beat me,” I told him.

  “Naw. It’s all right, Daddy,” Damon said, and sighed again. “I know you have to work and that it’s probably important stuff. It’s just hard for us sometimes. You know how it is.”

  “I love you, and I should be there, and I won’t miss the next concert,” I said to him.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” Damon said.

  “I’ll hold myself to it,” I told him.

  Chapter 24

  I WAS still at the precinct house in Brentwood at around seven-thirty that night. I was tired and finally looked up from a thick sheaf of police reports on the sadistic murders that had taken place in nine West Coast cities, plus the one in D.C. that we knew about. The case was scaring the hell out of me, and certainly not because I believed in vampires.

  I did believe in the weird and horrible things people could sometimes do to one another: savage bites, sadistic hangings, draining blood out of bodies, attack tigers. For once, I couldn’t begin to imagine what the killers might be like. I couldn’t profile them. Neither could the FBI’s behavioral science unit. Kyle Craig had admitted as much to me. That was one reason he was out here himself. Kyle was stumped too. There was no precedent for this string of murders.

  Jamilla appeared at my desk around quarter to eight. She had been working down the hall. She had a very pretty face, but tonight she just looked tired. There is a simple fact of life about police work. Adrenaline gets flowing during bad cases. It makes everybody’s feelings more intense. Attractions grow and can cause unanticipated problems. I had been there before, and maybe so had Jamilla. She acted like it. Maybe that was why we were a little tentative around each other.

  She leaned over my desk, and I could smell a light cologne. “I have to go back to San Francisco, Alex. I’m heading out to the airport now. I left beaucoup notes for you and Kyle on some of the files I was able to get through. I’ll tell you what, though: It doesn’t seem, to me, that all the murders were committed by the same killers. That’s my contribution for today.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. Actually, I’d had the same feeling. Nothing to substantiate it, though. Just a gut reaction to the evidence we had gathered so far.

  Jamilla rubbed the bridge of her nose, then she wrinkled it some. Her mannerisms were funny and made me smile. “The patterns keep changing. Especially if you look at the most recent murders versus the ones from a year or two ago. In the earlier murders the killers were methodical, very careful. The last couple of murders are slapdash, Alex. More violent too.”

  “I don’t disagree. I’ll look at all the files carefully. So will Kyle and his folks at Quantico. Anything else bothering you?” I asked.

  She thought about it. “A strange crime was reported this morning. Might be something. Funeral home in Woodland Hills. Somebody broke in, ravaged one of the bodies. Could be a copycat. I left the file for you. Anyway, I have to run if I want to catch the next shuttle. . . . You’ll keep in touch?”

  “Of course I will. Absolutely. You’re not getting off the hook this easily.”

  She waved once, and then she was gone down the hallway.

  I hated to see her leave.

  Jam.

  Chapter 25

  TEN MINUTES after Jamilla left to catch her plane back to San Francisco, Kyle appeared at my desk. He looked like a rumpled, tweedy forty-something professor who had just emerged from his library carrel after days of researching a scholarly piece for a criminal justice journal.

  “You crack the code?” I asked him. “If you did, can I get a flight out of here tonight? I’m catching hell at home for being out here.”

  “I didn’t crack a goddamn thing,” he complained. Then he yawned. “My head feels a little cracked. Like there’s a slow leak or something.” He rubbed his knuckles back and forth against his skull.

  “You believe in new age vampires yet?” I asked. “Role players?”

  He gave me one of his crooked little half smiles. “Oh, I always believed in vampires. Ever since I was a boy in Virginia and then North Carolina. Vampires, ghosts, zombies, other diabolical creatures of the night. Southerners believe in such things. It’s our Gothic heritage, I suppose. Actually, ghosts are more our specialty. I definitely believe in ghosts. I wish this were only a ghost story.”

  “Maybe it is. I saw a ghost the other night. Her name was Mary Alice Richardson. These bastards hung and murdered her during one of their pleasure fests.”

  Around nine, Kyle and I finally left the station house in Brentwood to get some grub and maybe a few beers. I was pleased to have some time with him. Bad thoughts were buzzing in my head: disconnected feelings, suspicions, and general paranoia about the case. And, of course, there was always the Mastermind to worry about. He might call, or send a fax, or E-mail.

  We stopped at a small bar called the Knoll on the way back to the hotel. It looked like a quiet place to have a drink and talk. Kyle and I often did this when we were on the road together.

  “So how are you doing out here, Alex?” Kyle asked after he’d taken a sip of Anchor Steam. “You all right? Holding up so far? I know you don’t like being away from Nana and the kids. I’m sorry about that. Can’t be helped. This is a big case.”

  I was too tired to argue with him. “In the words of Tiger Woods, ‘I didn’t have my A game today.’ I’m a little stumped, Kyle. This is all new and all bad.”

  He nodded and said, “I don’t mean today. Overall. In general. On balance. How the hell are you doing? You seem tense to me. We’ve all been noticing it, Alex. You don’t volunteer much at Saint Anthony’s anymore. Little things like that.”

  I looked at him, studied his intense brown eyes. He was a friend, but Kyle was also a calculating man. He wa
nted something. What was he after? What thoughts were going through his mind?

  “On balance, I’m totally fucked. No, I’m okay. I’m happy with the way the kids are doing. Little Alex is the best antidote for anything. Damon and Jannie are doing fine. I still miss Christine: I miss her a lot. I’m troubled about how much time I spend investigating the sickest, most fucked-up crimes that anyone can conjure up. Other than that, I’m just fine.”

  Kyle said, “You’re in demand because you’re good at this. That’s just the way it is. Your instincts, your emotional IQ, something sets you apart from the other cops.”

  “Maybe I’d rather not be so good anymore. Maybe I’m not. The murder cases have affected every aspect of my life. I’m afraid they’re changing who I am. Tell me about Betsey Cavalierre. Anything on the case? There must be something.”

  Kyle shook his head. His eyes showed concern. “There’s absolutely nothing on her murder, Alex. Nothing on the Mastermind either. That prick still calling you any time of day or night?”

  “Yeah. He never mentions Betsey or her murder anymore.”

  “We could set up another trace on your phones. I’ll do that for you.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good.”

  Kyle continued to look deep into my eyes. I sensed he was concerned, but it was hard to tell with him. “You think he might be watching you? Following you?”

  I shook my head. “Sometimes I get that feeling, yeah. Let me ask you something, since I have you here. Why do you keep pulling me into these messed-up cases, Kyle? We worked Casanova down in Durham, the Dunne and Goldberg kidnapping, the bank robberies. Now this piece of shit.”

  Kyle didn’t hesitate to spell it out. “You’re the best I know, Alex. Your instincts are almost always on target. You give these investigations the best shot they could get. Sometimes you solve them, sometimes not, but you’re always close. Why don’t you come join us at the Bureau? I’m serious, and yes, this is an offer.”