It was Vollman.
"You were summoned tonight to the scene of a crime," Vollman said. "A murder, in fact."
"How the hell did you know that?" Karl asked him.
Vollman gave one of his narrow smiles. "I have my resources," he said. "Perhaps, in this instance, something as mundane as a scanner that picks up police radio broadcasts."
"You seem to know why we're here, Vollman," I said. "But that doesn't explain why you are."
"I assume the murder had one or more… occult… elements, or you gentlemen would not have been called to view the aftermath," Vollman said.
"Yeah. So?" I took a long breath, made myself a little calmer. Vollman was a fucking bloodsucker, but for the moment, we needed him. The minute we didn't…
"May I ask what those elements were?" He was a polite leech, I'll give him that.
I took another one of those long breaths, then looked at Karl, who shrugged, "Why not?"
"The victim had some esoteric symbols carved into his forehead," I said. "Three of them. Could be occult-related, although they don't fit in with any system of magic that I ever heard of."
Even in the half-light, with the fog getting thicker, I could see something cross Vollman's lean face. I wondered what it was. After a long pause he asked, "Can you describe them?"
"I can do better than that," I said, reaching for my notebook. "I drew them."
I showed Vollman my version of the marks from the victim's brow. He looked at them as if he was trying to burn the images into his memory.
"These drawings are accurate?" he asked.
"Pretty close," I said. "I should have photos to check them against in a day or two, if it matters.
There wasn't enough light to use my phone camera."
"You recognize them?" Karl asked.
"Not precisely, no," Vollman said, without taking his eyes off the paper. "They are very old in origin, I think. Sumerian, or possibly Babylonian. I have some books that I can consult."
"And if you find something, you're going to let us know, right? Since we've been so open with you about this case and everything," I said.
"Of course," Vollman said. "But in the meantime, Sergeant, may I offer a suggestion?"
As if I could fucking stop you. "What?"
"Ask whoever conducts the autopsy to look closely at the throat wound, with special attention to any trace elements that may be found there. It is very important, I think, to know exactly what was used to inflict the fatal cut."
"What was used?" Karl said. "Shit, that oughta be obvious. It was a knife, and a damn sharp one, too. Or a straight razor, maybe."
Vollman nodded. "I expect you are correct, Detective. But a crucial point is the material that the blade was made of."
"Why's that so important?" I asked him.
"The answer to that depends on what you find out," Vollman said with another one of his toothless smiles. Didn't want to display his fangs, I guess.
The smile didn't last long. "I will be, as you say, in touch."
Vollman took a couple of steps back, the fog and darkness making his form indistinct.
"I need you to do better than-" I began, then stopped. "Vollman? Vollman!"
He was gone, the stagy old bastard.
Karl summarized my feelings very well. "Fucking vamps," he said.
The autopsy report only took twenty-four hours or so, which was almost as big a miracle as the one that followed "Lazarus, come forth!" It informed us that the victim died of "exsanguination following a single deep, narrow laceration that severed carotid artery, windpipe, and jugular vein, with aspirated blood as a contributing factor."
In other words, somebody cut the guy's throat, and he bled out and died, inhaling some of his own blood in the process. Big surprise.
The tissue analysis of the wound area took another couple of days. Would've been longer, but the Homicide guys had put pressure on the lab. Good thing, too, or we might have had to wait a week or more for the results. Nobody rushes stuff for the Supe Squad.
Homicide was treating this as their case. For the time being, we were letting them think it was. But we still got copies of all the paperwork. Scanlon saw to that.
"Silver?" Lieutenant McGuire stared at the top sheet of the lab report I'd just dropped on his desk. "They're sure?"
"Sure as the lab is likely to be," I said. In the chair beside me, I heard Karl give a quiet snort of laughter. He was probably thinking about some of the notable fuckups the lab had made in the past.
"I could have a sample sent to the FBI in Washington," I said, with a straight face. "They've got better facilities, as they're always reminding us."
"Sure," McGuire said. "And the results might even come back before I collect my pension. But I doubt it."
He was right. When it comes to requests from local law enforcement, the FBI lab could make a glacier look speedy.
"You didn't get to the good part yet," I told McGuire. "Keep reading."
He gave me a look, then returned to the lab report. McGuire's a fast reader, and I wondered how long it would take him to get to the punch line.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four "A vamp? The vic's a fucking vampire?"
I was about to say something stupid like "Yeah, where do we send the medal?" when Karl piped up with, "Must be, boss. It's pretty hard to fuck that up, once you know what to look for. There's, I think, nine different tests they can do."
We both looked at him. He shrugged and said, "I read a lot, okay?"
McGuire sat back in his chair, frowning. "Why would somebody use a silver-coated knife to off a vampire? There's plenty of easier ways to do it."
"Beats the shit out of me," I said. "But Vollman thought we might find something interesting in the wound. That's why I requested the tissue analysis."
"Who's Vollman?" McGuire asked. "Oh, right – your informant, I remember now. Maybe you better ask Mr Vollman why he thought the laceration would have unusual material in it."
"I'd love to," I told him. "But I don't know how to contact the bloodsucker."