Vampire Zero (Laura Caxton, #3)(53)
“Vampire attack,” the expert said, after studying the body for a while. “More violent than the previous ones we’ve seen. This wasn’t premeditated.”
“No,” Caxton said. “Listen, I was here. I know all this already. Do you think you could tell me something I could use?”
The expert grunted again. “Maybe. This is not an exact science, Trooper.”
“Special Deputy. Let’s go look at the clothes.” She led the expert back out to the lawn and the shirt and pair of pants Arkeley had left behind. “Nobody has touched them. I made sure of it.”
“Good. Honestly, fiber’s my specialty,” the expert said.
Caxton sighed in relief. Fetlock had sent the right person for the job, then. There would be no fingerprints on the scene, or any DNA evidence. Vampires didn’t leave those behind, ever. Fibers were another matter. Anybody who wore clothes left fibers behind, somewhere.
The expert took one quick look at the clothes, then examined a few loose threads with a jeweler’s loupe.
“I think I can confirm this is a match with what we saw at the hotel. Three kinds of fibers. We left a report for your liaison.”
“I got it,” Caxton agreed.
“Yeah. She wasn’t there at your HQ when we arrived. We had to leave the report with a desk sergeant. She never even followed up to let me know she got it. That’s just not professional. You want some free advice? Fire this twit. You’ve got real forensic pathologists in Harrisburg. Any of them would do a better job.”
The woman was talking about Clara. Caxton held her tongue.
“Anyway, I’ll do an actual comparison, but for now, I’ll provisionally say we’re looking at the same three fibers. Cotton, nylon, Twaron.”
“What the hell is Twaron?” Caxton asked. She’d been wondering all day. The expert picked at the shirt and unbuttoned it. Beneath was another layer of cloth, some kind of vest. She picked up the vest and threw it at Caxton, who caught it—but it was much heavier than she’d expected and she nearly dropped it. Squishing it in her hand, she knew what it was instantly.
“Twaron,” the expert explained, “is a competing product with Kevlar. It’s used in the construction of police body armor, mostly. Your vampire was wearing a ballistic vest.”
Vampire Zero
Chapter 33.
Caxton slapped the vest down on one of the desks in the briefing room a few hours later. Glauer stared at it as if there was some hidden message written on it, something he could read if he just looked hard enough.
“It’s a type IIIA ballistic vest,” Caxton said. “Standard police issue. Twaron fibers woven just right to reduce the impact of a bullet.” She rapped her knuckles on a spot just above where the wearer’s heart would be. “Then there’s a steel trauma plate here, just in case something gets through the fibers. It’ll stop pretty much any handgun bullet—.38 special, .44 Magnum, and just about any 9-millimeter round you can name, including the Parabellum rounds I load.”
Glauer tilted his head to one side. “So when you shot him, even at point-?blank range—”
“He probably felt it, but it probably didn’t hurt.” She shook her head. “If you add this to how tough a vampire is anyway—I’m not exactly sure what would kill him.”
“Jesus,” Glauer swore. The man rarely ever swore. “But I’m confused. In the middle of a firefight he just threw it away. Why?”
“We weren’t shooting at him with handgun bullets anymore. This time we were using rifles. A rifle bullet would go through this like tissue paper,” she said, poking her index finger through a hole low on the left side, about where the wearer’s kidney might be. The cop who had spoken with her after the ambush had been right—he had hit Jameson, just not in his one vital spot.
“Jameson’s smart. We knew that already. He’s smart enough to understand his limitations. Most vampires don’t. They’re tougher than us, a hell of a lot faster, but they’re arrogant. They think they’re invincible, and that makes them cocky. Jameson is the least vain vampire I’ve ever seen.”
“Maybe, but then again he did leave this behind, right? So now he’s unprotected. You can’t just buy these off the Internet. You need to be in law enforcement to get one, and nobody is going to sell a vest to a vampire.”
Caxton punched the vest, and not lightly. “That would be great, wouldn’t it? Fetlock’s forensics expert said pretty much the same thing. For about an hour I was happy. Then I got a call. A peace officer out of Lenhartsville had radioed in saying he had a subject that matched the description on my APB. Tall, vampire, naked, running along the side of I-78. He said he was going to investigate. Then he never radioed back.”
“Oh, no.”
Caxton nodded. “A second unit was dispatched to the scene. The peace officer was found drained of blood. The engine of his cruiser was still running, but the trunk had been torn open, as if with a pry bar. You want to guess what was missing from the trunk?”
“A type IIIA ballistic vest?” Glauer asked.
Caxton touched the tip of her nose. “He doesn’t mind running around without any pants on, but Jameson feels naked without a trauma plate over his heart. He didn’t waste any time getting another one.”