The Vampire Who Played Dead (Spinoza Series #2), Page 4

  Perhaps even knocking long and hard.

  * * *

  The house was immaculate.

  It was a mini-mansion, as I would describe it, with Doric columns out front and marble floors in the entry way and a winding staircase that led to the second floor. The older lady who greeted me for our appointment did not smile at me. When people don’t smile at me, I get more nervous. Words are harder to find and the sweat breaks out all over. Sometimes stammering ensues, too.

  James Bond I’m not.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Spinoza,” said the woman. “Would you like something to drink?”

  I said I was fine.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said in a strangled whisper.

  She frowned and sat across from me and I fought my nerves and pressed forward. I had a job to do, after all. It was my mantra. In fact that mantra—I have a job to do—had gotten me through many personal harrowing experiences. Harrowing, that is, for me.

  I have a job to do, I thought again and again.

  I raised my voice. “As you know, I’m here to talk about your daughter.”

  She merely nodded. Her name was Elizabeth Perkins, and she was the mother of Evelyn Drake, whose body was presently missing. The family, I knew, was wealthy. How and why they were wealthy, I didn’t know. Perhaps old Hollywood money. An investor or a producer or something. Anyway, Mrs. Perkins was wearing white slacks and a red blouse that highlighted her trim figure. She was probably in her sixties. Her scowling face made her look older.

  “Has anyone contacted you about your daughter’s... missing remains?” I asked.

  “Other than the police, no. Only Detective Hammer and now you.” Her jawline tightened. “May I ask your interest in this case, Mr. Spinoza?”

  “I’m working with the boy, her biological son.”

  She made no indication that she heard me. No nod. No frown. Nothing. She said, “I was under the impression that the boy is a runaway.”

  “He ran away from an abusive situation and is now in a better situation.”

  I was all too aware that she was his biological grandmother. That fact did not seem to please her. “Better situation, how?”

  “He’s living with an aunt and uncle.”

  She made a noncommittal noise in the back of her throat. I pressed forward, so uncomfortable I could barely think straight. “Has anyone unofficial contacted you, Mrs. Perkins?”

  “Unofficial in what way?”

  I took a deep breath, calmed myself. I have a job to do. I have a job to do. “Has anyone tried to blackmail you with your daughter’s remains?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  Breathe, breathe. “Has anyone demanded money for the return of your daughter’s body?”

  She raised her hand to her face and looked away and the tears sprang from her eyes. The change was so sudden that I sat there, surprised. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I had just asked a mother, who’s daughter had been murdered a few years earlier, if a body snatcher had tried to ransom her daughter’s remains.

  Jesus.

  A sick world. A sick question. A question I had to ask.

  She was shaking her head and her steely facade had crumbled completely. She kept shaking her head even while I sat there, uncomfortable, regretting my decision to come, but needing answers, nonetheless.

  “No,” she finally said. “I’ve heard from no one. Do people really do that?”

  “It’s possible. It happened to Charlie Chaplin’s family.”

  She wept harder and covered her face and I heard movement from upstairs, although I saw no one at the time. I asked her if she had ever been contacted by the cemetery. If there had ever been any indication of a grave plot mix-up. The questions were difficult and painful for both of us, and all the while I kept hearing creaking above me. Someone was pacing up there, listening.

  Mrs. Perkins was beyond speech. She just kept shaking her head at each question and finally I decided to leave. I apologized for causing her pain and left my card on the coffee table.

  And as I turned to leave, I involuntarily gasped. From upstairs a young woman was looking down at me. Peering over the bannister from around a corner that led, I assumed, to a hallway. The woman had a strong resemblance to Evelyn Drake, but she was younger by many years. Her sister, I thought. Or perhaps a cousin. I blinked, and she blinked, and then she turned away, disappearing into the shadows.

  I let myself out.

  Chapter Eleven

  I was sitting in a Starbucks with a new friend of mine, the old detective, Aaron King.

  I had met Aaron recently through another acquaintance of mine, Jim Knighthorse, a character who worked out of Orange County. All three of us had been brought along on a case involving a missing girl, led by another Orange County detective, a young woman named Samantha Moon. Four detectives working one case, and we did eventually find the girl, with Aaron King and Samantha Moon seeing the case through to the end.

  Samantha Moon was someone I thought about often. Beautiful, perky, but shrouded in a mystery. Something haunted her. What it was, I doubt I would ever know. Aaron King and I talked a little about the case of the missing girl, and about Samantha Moon and her own possible secrets, but Aaron was keeping quiet about her. My instincts told me that he knew something he wasn’t revealing. At least, not yet.

  I switched the subject to my case at hand. I needed another investigator to bounce some ideas off of, especially now that I had recently been faxed the autopsy report. A report that had been disturbing in more ways than one. I would have picked Hammer to speak with, but Hammer was fairly closed-minded. I needed someone with an open mind.

  A very open mind.

  After all, I was beginning to think that something very, very strange was going on here.

  Aaron King seemed enigmatic himself. The old guy was good looking enough, and projected a confidence that I completely lacked. He sat across from me in a wobbly outdoor chair, drinking a hot coffee, black. No frills. I decided that Aaron King looked like someone I knew, but I couldn’t place him. Not now. And, really, I didn’t care.

  I caught him up to date on the case, keeping to the facts. And next caught him up on the autopsy report Hammer had faxed to me just that afternoon. A report that included the method of death: multiple stabbings.

  Aaron cringed as if he’s burned his tongue. “He was a bastard, for sure. They have him on Death Row?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  I nodded and next brought up a peculiar aspect of the slaying. “He had used a silver knife.”

  King’s eyes narrowed. “A strange metal for a knife.”

  “It was a silver butter knife.”

  “So he grabs the first weapon he sees.”

  I nodded. “Maybe. Except the knife was in the upstairs bedside drawer.”

  “Helluva place to keep a butter knife.”

  “Lots of people keep weapons by their beds.”

  “But a butter knife?” asked King.

  “Maybe the man liked toast in bed.”

  King shook his head. Glendale Boulevard was thick with cars and exhaust. The exhaust wafted over us. It was a sad testament to our city living that neither of us coughed nor waved it away. King said, “Did the husband ever give a confession?”

  “He never spoke to the police. In fact, he never spoke to anyone.”

  “So we’ll never know why he kept a butter knife in his upper drawer next to his bed.”

  “Probably not.”

  “And yet he stabbed her...how many times?”

  “Seventy-two times.”

  King whistled. “That’s rage.”

  “By the time the police arrived, she had been drained of most of her blood.”

  “I would think so.” King shivered and looked sick. I didn’t blame him.

  “The husband then staged the scene to make it look like a break in.”

  “Dumb ass.”

  I nodded. �
�He was arrested within the week.”

  King set his drink down. In fact, he even pushed it away. “So what’s your concerns, Spinoza?”

  I took a deep breath and wondered how much I should tell him. I finally decided that I needed to bounce some thoughts off of someone, some slightly disturbing thoughts, and the enigmatic old guy seemed about as good a choice as anyone.

  So I told him about my discoveries inside the casket, about the evidence that seemed to indicate someone had been knocking on it from the inside, and the seasoned detective looked at me sideways for a long time before answering.

  “You’re yanking my chain, Spinoza.”

  “No.”

  “And the wood was split?”

  “Directly behind the damaged padding.”

  He was quiet some more and we both listened to a motorcycle rumble by. Not quite a Harley, but it sure wanted to be. When the noise maker was gone, King spoke. “Something must have been hitting it pretty hard to split the wood.”

  “Hard and perhaps sustained.”

  “Are you telling me that you think someone was buried alive in that thing?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m telling you.”

  “Does any of this relate to the silver butter knife.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe.”

  “Silver, as in a werewolf?”

  “Or a vampire.”

  “Silver kills both?” asked King.

  I thought back to my last big case a month ago. “I think so, yes.”

  King leaned forward and there was a wild look in his eyes. Something else flashed at me, some distant memory, or recognition, but I couldn’t place it. He said, “Are you telling me that you think Evelyn Drake was a vampire or a werewolf?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” I said. “The evidence speaks for itself. So how come you don’t look more surprised, King?”

  He looked away, sipping his coffee. “Let’s just say this isn’t my first vampire.”

  Chapter Twelve

  I waited behind the bulletproof partition while the man in chains sat across from me. He looked at me long and hard before he reached over with his cuffed hands and picked up the receiver. His breathing sounded like something remembering something, as the great poet Stan Rice would say. And when he spoke, his voice sounded distant and hollow, too.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  I held my business card up against the mesh glass. A cop friend recently told me that a woman had punched through a similar bulletproof glass, but you can’t believe everything you hear. Edward Drake leaned forward and read the card, and then leaned back again.

  “I always figured someone would come knocking some day,” he said.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked. He asked me to speak up and I did, louder and with more force. Apparently my shyness didn’t translate too well through the glass partition.

  “You’re kind of shy, aren’t you?” he asked, grinning.

  I shrugged. I never know how to answer that. And my shyness keeps me from opening up too much about it. A catch-22 if ever there was one.

  He kept grinning and said, “Well, anyway, we both know why you’re here.”

  “We do?”

  “It’s about Evelyn. My ex-wife, of course.”

  “What about her?” I was holding the phone close to my ear, but not too close and not too hard. I could only imagine how often these ear pieces were cleaned.

  He said, “I presume she’s missing.”

  I had been in the act of swallowing and suddenly found myself coughing nearly hysterically. While I hacked away, Edward watched me with a bemused expression.

  “Easy, ol’ boy,” he said.

  “And why would you...” I coughed again, “presume that?”

  “Because I didn’t kill her correctly, you see. I realized my mistake far too late.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s why I stabbed her so many times.”

  “Jesus, what are you talking about?”

  The bemused expression was gone now. It had been replaced with something unreadable...but cold as hell. “The knife I used, the knife I had thought was silver, wasn’t really silver. It was silver plated. An honest mistake.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Oh, I think you do, ol’ boy.”

  He was right, but I was having a hard time coming to terms with it, despite my recent past. “You’re saying she didn’t die because your knife wasn’t pure silver.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I’ve read the autopsy report,” I said. “Of course she’s dead.”

  “Oh, I’m sure she appeared dead. They always appear dead, especially if they lose enough blood.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “And if they do lose enough blood, it takes them weeks, perhaps even months to recover. And even though the knife was only silver plated, there was undoubtedly enough silver in it to still inflict serious harm.”

  He stopped and looked at me. I was all too aware that my mouth was hanging open. Flashbacks to events of a few months ago hit me again, and hit me hard. What the hell was going on?

  “You’re talking about a vampire,” I said.

  He grinned. “Could you say that a little louder, ol’ boy?”

  Chapter Thirteen

  I glanced at the wire-covered clock on the wall behind me. We had twenty minutes left. I asked Edward to tell me what he knew as quickly as he could, and he obliged.

  Edward first became aware that his wife was something more than human about a year before her death; or, as he put it, her alleged death.

  Listening to all of this in stunned silence, I could only sit back and watch the man closely, looking for any signs of instability. I found none. If anything, he seemed perfectly normal, often speaking eloquently and with touches of humor.

  His wife’s change had occurred nearly three years ago, when she had been jogging around the reservoir in Silver Lake one evening. Everyone had warned her against jogging the reservoir, which doubled as an idyllic lake; that is, if you removed the chain link fence, barbed wire and dozens of off-limits signs. But his wife had always been fearless and, really, Silver Lake was mostly considered harmless. The reservoir was nestled among some of the nicer Hollywood fringe homes, often occupied by those who had found some success in show business.

  One night, she didn’t come home. Edward had immediately gone looking for her, circling the reservoir, until he finally found what looked like a bundle of clothing in the bushes. The bundle turned out to be his wife. She was a mess, her neck torn open, her clothing ripped, blood everywhere. How she wasn’t dead, he didn’t know.

  She was rushed to the hospital where she spent many days recovering. And recovering rapidly, he added.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked. I didn’t read many vampire books. Or watch many vampire movies. I had only a vague idea of what vampires were, and outside of some very strange events a month ago, I would have laughed at the entire notion. Would have. But not now. Indeed, I had seen something during my last case that was still haunting my dreams to this day.

  And now this....

  “It means that she healed far faster than she should have.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “Not much, but they were stunned.”

  Someone sat near me, a woman reeking of a lot of perfume. Another inmate was led into the room, shackled similarly to Edward. He sat a few seats down and picked up the phone. The woman sitting next to me immediately began weeping. Edward and I ignored them as he continued recounting his tale.

  Life rapidly turned strange in the Drake household. His wife seemed to have developed an aversion to sunlight. She was both stronger than ever before and sickly, too. At least, sickly during the day. One night she had come home from shopping. She had purchased three porterhouse steaks and had apparently torn into the packaging on the way home. The steaks were still there but he was certain she had drank the blood that
pooled at the bottom of the Styrofoam trays.

  About a month later, with his wife’s midnight runs to the store continuing, coupled with her aversion to sunlight—not to mention an alarming number of missing cat posters popping up in the neighborhood—Edward had concluded that his wife had been changed into something supernatural.

  Into something that scared the hell out of him.

  We both looked at the time. Ours was running out. He fast-forwarded one year later when their marriage was crumbling. I asked why he would stay married to something that scared him. He mentioned the kids. He also mentioned something else, something that surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have.

  “I knew I had to kill her,” he said. “So I was biding my time.”

  “But she was your wife.”

  “She had been my wife. But she had turned into something else. Something not very nice.”

  “I’ve looked through the police report,” I said. “There were many instances in past years of the police coming out. Claims of abuse.”

  Edward shrugged. “Yeah, we fought. And we fought passionately. Did I hit her? Yes, once or twice. I was never proud of it. I sought counseling.”

  “The police paint a different picture.”

  “They had to. They had to explain a series of events that would otherwise be unexplainable.”

  “The detective and prosecutors claimed you abused her, beat her up, accused her of cheating often, and then finally killed her in a fit of rage.”

  “Some of that is correct, but not to the extreme they made it out to be. My killing her was, however, very planned.”

  He had spent many months verifying his suspicions. He needed to be sure. He’d notice she quit casting a reflection. Her photos came up blurry and amorphous, as if she wasn’t there. She quickly quit taking photos altogether. He watched her avoid meals, only to come home late at night, satisfied. He watched her avoid all sunlight, claiming she now preferred the night. She slept all day and neglected the kids. Edward feared for the kids’ safety. He feared for his own safety. He feared for anyone’s safety who was in contact with his wife. He tried to talk about this to her, but she laughed it off. He tried repeatedly until one day she had thrown him against a wall, warning him to back off. She made new friends, too. Creepy friends. Evil friends. Friends he couldn’t believe she would permit around the kids.