Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(13)
“Gerhard, darling?”
The man shook his head.
“This camera of yours, does it photograph vampires, too?”
“The Percipience Camera should indeed be able to capture images of vampires, werewolves, and similar phenomena involving spiritual dislocation.”
Betts leaned back in his seat, rolling out a wet lower lip and placing a finger on his chin, which Gannon had learned meant he was thinking. He turned to her. “Wendy, while we’re at it, we might as well grab some footage on these murders.” He stared off into space. “The Savannah Vampire…who knows where it might lead?”
“Sure,” said Wendy. It did make sense, “demon-haunted Savannah” and all that.
Betts turned and yelled down the hall. “Hey, Marty! Come here!”
Martin Vladimirovich was the crew’s long-suffering researcher-assistant. He appeared a moment later from his cubicle down the hall. He always looked like he’d just woken up, his hair flattened along one side. Sleepy and disheveled seemed to be the style, Gannon thought, among twenty-somethings, perhaps as a way to show they didn’t give a shit. But underneath that veneer, Marty was a smart and capable researcher.
“Go find out everything you can about any local vampire legends,” said Betts. “You know—history, lore, victims, all that shit.”
“Yes, Mr. Betts.”
“And if you don’t find anything, or if it’s dull…well, you know what to do.”
“Yes, Mr. Betts.” And he shuffled back down the hall.
Betts went on. “You know, with this happening right in the middle of filming, it might even make for a great through-line. Maybe we could get a bunch of Percipience photos of ghosts or whatever at one of the murder scenes—right, Gerhard?”
“Perhaps.”
“Great! Hell, maybe we could even solve the case with that camera. Think about that. This isn’t some ghostly haunting that’s a hundred years old—this is something going on today.” He turned to Gannon. “We’ve got a police scanner radio, right?”
“Of course.” A scanner was obligatory equipment for a film crew in a city.
“Tomorrow, let’s shoot some footage of the cops and the investigation. When Marty digs up some background, we can shoot at some of those locations, too. Think about it, darling: two bodies, sucked dry of blood. You never know where this is going. It could be big, and I mean big.”
10
FRANCIS WELLSTONE JR., SLOWED his brisk walk as he eyed the numbers over the stately front doors flanking West Oglethorpe Avenue. Sixty-seven, sixty-three…there it was: a neocolonial manse with just the right amount of genteel craquelure over the stone fa?ade. It could have been a film set lifted right out of Jezebel.
He adjusted his tie—damn, he’d forgotten how humid Savannah was—cleared his throat, and ascended the steps. As he rang the doorbell, he caught a reflection of himself in the frosted glass: the hair with just a touch of gray, the faint patrician lines coming out at the edges of his eyes: a visage that over the years had graced so many television interviews. Odd, he thought, that he wasn’t recognized more frequently on the street.
There was a bustle from inside, and then the door opened to reveal a well-preserved woman, perhaps seventy years old, makeup carefully done, white hair tinged a shade of lavender, clothes expensive enough to artfully conceal a good twenty extra pounds.
“Mr. Wellstone!” she said, her eyes running up and down his suit.
“Mrs. Fayette?”
“Please call me Daisy.”
“Only if you’ll call me Frank.”
“It’s a deal!” And with something between a curtsy and a passé relevé, she ushered him through the entryway, along a short hall, and into a parlor that instantly gladdened his heart. It was straight out of Tennessee Williams, down to the antimacassars, portraits of dead Confederates, and a mantle of dust. A bow window looked down over West Oglethorpe, its fringed curtains filtering the beams of morning light. An ornate bookshelf was set against the interior wall, and Wellstone gave it a habitual glance as he passed by. A moment later, as he took the proffered seat in an overstuffed wing chair, he realized he needn’t have bothered: the coffee table in front of him proudly displayed four of his books. Two, he was pleased to see as he set down his briefcase, were recent, published in the last decade; Malice Aforethought was there as well, of course; and the other, he noticed with annoyance, bore a remainder stamp on the text block.
“It’s such a pleasure to meet you!” Daisy Fayette said, blushing faintly beneath her powder. “Please, have some lemonade.”
Wellstone allowed the matron to pour him a glass. “Thank you.”
“Thank you. I was so surprised to get your letter. Bless your heart, you could have knocked me over with a feather. Imagine: Francis Wellstone, wanting to interview me!”
He drank this in with a smile. “Reliable sources have mentioned you’re the person to talk to when it comes to Savannah’s history.”
“And aren’t you kind to say so? I have to tell you, Mr. Wellstone—Frank—that Malice Aforethought was one of the most fascinating and shocking books I’ve ever read.”
Wellstone kept his smile in place with some effort. Why was it that when people wanted to compliment him, they invariably brought up his first, and best-known, work? What exactly did they think he’d been doing in the twenty years since it was published? It was like gushing to Papa Haydn over his first damned symphony.