Bloodless (Aloysius Pendergast #20)(16)

“Oh, yes. It’s just like the story Miss Belinda would tell us at bedtime. The one about the Savannah Vampire. Betts thinks it’s returned, you know, with these two murders.”

“The Savannah Vampire,” Wellstone repeated. This was pure gold. So Betts was going to spin those two murders up into some bullshit story of a vampire stalking Savannah. Of course he would. “I do believe, Daisy Fayette, that this vampire should be our very next topic of conversation. Find out all you can on your next visit, and we’ll get together again soon.”

And, oh, Barclay, dear, he thought with satisfaction as they clinked glasses in the gauzy parlor light, I’m about to give you the shaft. And you—you’re going to take it and love it.





11



COMMANDER ALANNA DELAPLANE WALKED across Chatham Square with homicide detective Sergeant Benny Sheldrake by her side. It proved quicker to park on the far side of the square and walk across, instead of trying to drive around. She could see flashing lights in the park, amid teams of CSIs in monkey suits and blue gloves moving around.

Twenty minutes before, a gardener with a city subcontractor had reported the grisly find, and the whole machinery of police investigation was now clanking into operation.

In her twenty-year career with the Savannah PD, Delaplane had seen plenty of so-called paranormal stunts. There were a lot of weird people out there claiming special powers, and most of them seemed to pass through Savannah. She wondered if this was just another hustle, some joker capitalizing on the Savannah Vampire thing. On the other hand, two people were dead, their blood sucked out—and that was no stunt. Neither was the perp a fool, having left precious little evidence behind on the victims or at the crime scenes.

They approached a couple of cops stringing tape, while others were working crowd control, trying to keep people back.

“Sergeant Rollo?” she said, stopping at the tape and addressing one of the cops. “Where’s the gardener who called it in?”

“Right over there, Commander.”

She turned and saw a man sitting on a bench, dressed in blue work overalls, hugging himself. A uniformed cop sat next to him. Delaplane and Sheldrake walked over.

“Hello,” said Delaplane to the gardener, who looked up at her. He was an older Black man with white hair, deeply wrinkled face, and frightened eyes. She was a little surprised to see how affected he seemed to be. It was, after all, only a severed finger. “I’m Commander Delaplane. Can I sit down and ask a few questions?”

The uniformed cop rose as Delaplane took a seat, Sheldrake on the other side. The detective took out a tape recorder and turned it on, setting it down on the bench.

“Do you mind?” she asked, nodding at the recorder.

The man shook his head.

“May I ask your name?”

“Gilbert Johnson.”

“Thank you, Gilbert.” Delaplane tried to make her voice sound kindly. She’d been told more than once that she came across as brassy and intimidating. “Tell me what happened, in your own words, starting at the beginning.”

Johnson nodded. “I was working fertilizer into that bottlebrush hedge.” He nodded toward where the CSI team was clustered. “Someone had been smoking, and there were a lot of butts in there that I was picking up. Then I saw the finger. I was working fast and thought it was a cigar butt at first, because it was kind of black, but it smelled bad and then I realized what it was. So I threw it back down. And then I saw the hair.”

“Hair?” This hadn’t been in the brief initial report she’d received.

“Like someone was scalped. A long curl of scalp with hair. And there was blood, too.” He paused, breathing hard. “A lot of blood.”

“That’s okay, just take a moment.” She waited until he had collected himself, then asked, “And what did you do then?”

“I backed up and out of that hedge and called 911. That was about half an hour ago.”

Delaplane looked past the tape. She could see the forensic team going over the hedge with a fine-tooth comb.

“What happened to the cigarette butts?” she asked.

“I put them in the garbage bag.”

“Were they different brands or all the same?”

“I didn’t notice.”

“Where is the garbage bag?”

He pointed to a flaccid black bag lying next to the hedge.

Delaplane nodded to Sheldrake. “Make sure that’s taken in as evidence.”

The detective nodded back.

“Anything else you remember?”

“I’ve just been sitting here since.”

“Thank you, Gilbert,” she said, rising and looking around. It was a picture of good crime scene investigation. She wondered if the FBI was going to show up. Once again, she felt annoyed that the feds had gotten involved. There was nothing about this case that justified it. And the senior agent they’d sent down, what a strange one he was. He looked almost like a vampire himself, pale and thin and clad all in black. And when she heard him speak—in that honeyed, upper-class New Orleans accent—it made her skin crawl. She’d met his type before, and in her experience, all that southern gentility sometimes concealed a hard-core racist mindset. Maybe even a family history of slave ownership.

The other one, Coldmoon, was the opposite. Recently he’d been looking every inch the fed with his sidewall crew cut, mirrored sunglasses, blue suit, white shirt, and spit-and-polish black shoes. He, at least, had a pleasing, soft-spoken manner.