It was 9 P.M. when the phone woke Jessica Coran from a less than sound sleep. She at first only half heard the voice at the other end of the line, thinking it was a wrong number.
“ I–I-I know you'll want ta talk to-to me,” a whiny, nasally stutterer was saying. She started to protest but was stopped by his next words.
I haf in-for-ma-tion about the vam-pire kill-kill-er.”
“ Who is this?”
“ My name. I'm not givin' my-my name; but I–I-I think I know who-who he is.”
The voice was calm save for the stutter.
“ How did you get my number?”
“ I've read about these ter-ter-terrible kill-killings. I've seen you in the papers, and-and to-night I got your number by-by lying. I told a lie, and they gave me this num-umberrr.”
“ Who gave you this number?”
“ The girl with the police did it-it for me.”
She inwardly cringed, believing her number was given out to a wacko who had been following the case in the papers. The man sounded like a retarded person.
“ The girl at the police department? Which department?”
“ Does-doesn't matter,” he said impatiently.
She sat up in bed, trying to clear her mind and her eyes all at once. “What… what kind of lie did you tell to get my number?” she insisted. “That I'm your father…”
She immediately resented the bastard.
“… that, that your mother's ill, dying! and that I had to get in touch with you.” There was a solidness, a timbre to the voice that kept it from being completely babyish-sounding.
“ Why me? Why bring your story to me, when you've got the entire Chicago Police Department to tell it to?” Her voice was openly caustic now.
“ Po-Po-Police Department? I have! I have tried them. No one will le-listen, 'cause they think I–I-I'm-well, stupid or some-all be-because I use-use-use-did-did d-d-drugs, and-and I was in the hos-”
“ I see.”
“ No, you don't see. I see. No one but me. He lives next door. I see him comin' in with the-these things. Packin' this, this red stuff 'way in his how-how-house, you know? and he tells me once… once he tells me his dear old mother put up some-some tomatoes for him, and once he told me that it was jus' to-to-tomato juice, and once it was ke-ke-ketchup, but-but it's all the same. It's blood.”
“ Who is this other man? What is his name?”
There was a long pause at the other end, until finally, the man said, “My neighbor.”
“ German?”
“ Kinda German, yeah. How'd you know?”
“ Short, stocky man? Dark hair?” She was describing Kaseem's man.
“ Yeah-yeah-yeah, that's him, but how-how-how did you know?”
Ignoring this, she asked, “Where are you located?”
“ My house?”
“ Yes, so we can speak. So you can show me where this man lives.”
“ I–I-I don't want no trouble.”
“ Please, just give me his address, then.”
“ No-no-no. I'll let you come here. You can-can-can't go there alone.”
“ I don't intend to, and certainly not before I've had a chance to investigate this thing further.”
“ All right.”
“ Is your neighbor home now?”
“ No. Prowling. What vam-pires do this time of night. Never see him days-never. Sleeps in-in-in his how-how-house in-in-in a cof-fin, I–I bet.”
“ Where is your location? I'll send a car around.” She wondered if this wasn't just the beginning of the crank calls.
“ No! No! No cars.”
“ Sir, I can't help you if you don't-”
“ Dr. Coran, I don't talk to no one about this no more. I–I-I quit because they were going to lock me up.”
She wondered momentarily if she was not speaking this moment to the killer himself. Perhaps he was a classic dual personality, and while one side of him wallowed in the kill, another side of him abhorred it and the creature personality that had repeatedly murdered while this personality stood by. It was a possibility that she was talking to Davie Rosnich at this very moment, but she dared not frighten him off with such questions. She must first establish a location, a rendezvous spot with a vampire killer.
Or someone who knew the killer.
“ You come alone, or not at all,” insisted the stutterer.
“ All right. What is the address?”
The voice said, “5234 Oak Grove. If anyone is with you, I swear, I don't talk.”
“ Are you sure of what you've seen?”
“ Yes.”
“ What is the man's name you suspect.”
“ No, not until you come; otherwise, you won't come.”
“ But sir, if we had the name, we could run some checks.”
“ No! Just come. I'll show you. I see from my win-dow-dow some of the queer things he does. He… he's got all kinds of weird-looking sur-sur-gical stuff. Catheters, tubes, hypos, you-you name it.”
It was clearly a long shot, and yet something strained and pitiful in the voice made her wonder along with the mention of medical supplies and the van, not to mention tubes and catheters.
“ All right, all right. I'll be there as soon as I can be.”
“ I r-read the late pa-pers. Saw what you-you people said. Awful-just awful. What he did to those poor women.”
“ And men,” she added. “He's killed at least two men, and we have good reason to suspect that there have been others,” she added, to see what kind of response she would get.
“ Men? The pa-per-pers didn't say anything 'bout men he's done? I al-always knew it-down deep. Such a filthy man.”
“ I'm coming,” she said, and hung up.
Jessica knew it was regulation to get backup on a net, and she fully intended to, but this wasn't a net, and she didn't have enough evidence to prove it so; she didn't have enough for a bench warrant, much less a search warrant.
Besides, she didn't believe the stutterer to be the self-assured, methodical killer she had been tracking now for so long. And going to meet with the man only constituted “further investigation.” Under that light, she knew she was on her own.
If only Otto had not had to fly back to D.C. Her only other choice was Brewer, a man she felt uncomfortable around.
She wasn't a complete fool to go to the address alone without some idea of what she was getting herself into. She again telephoned the field office only to find Joe Brewer still unavailable. She spoke to another agent who did some checking and who found the location of the address she wanted on a precinct map. She was given the number of the police precinct that had somehow gotten her number and had passed it along to the caller. “If you get in touch with
Joe, tell him I'm investigating a lead that's taken me to this address.”
The agent seemed bored with the entire idea. Like Brewer and everyone else, he was convinced that the Chicago-to-Wekosha vampire was Maurice Lowenthal, and that the killer was quite dead. The fact that no more bloodless bodies had been found had lulled them all into inactivity where her case was concerned. Even Otto and the P.P. team back at Quantico had wanted to believe it ended with Lowenthal. She alone could not accept this fact.
“ Sure, sure, I'll see he gets the message,” the agent told her.
She then telephoned Precinct 13 to ask questions of the desk sergeant. She asked him if any complaint calls had come to them from the address in question.
“ Ever?”
“ Past year, two?”
“ That might take time.”
“ I'll call back in an hour?”
“ Give me your number, and I'll get back to you.”
“ I need to know within the hour, Sergeant.”
“ Things're pretty slow here for the moment, so I think I can oblige you there, Doctor.”
“ Thank you, Sergeant.”
She took the hour to dress, but in less than a half hour, the desk sergeant at 13 called back.
“ Yes, there've been quite a few complaints from this man.”
“ What's the name?”
“ Gamble.”
“ Appropriate,” she muttered.
“ What?”
“ Never mind.”
“ Hillary Gamble's the full name. Something of a nutcase.”
Appropriate again, she thought, but kept mum. “The name of the person he's made complaints against? “Practically the entire neighborhood. He's a real nuisance, this one. Goes about causing problems, it looks like.”
The record check revealed a number of complaints that ranged from Peeping Toms disturbing the man's peace to a bloody nose at the hand of one neighbor. “A real pain-in-the-ass crazy, what we call in the department an asshole's asshole, if you'll pardon my language, Dr. Coran.”
“ What was the nature of his last complaint?”
“ Claimed his neighbor had body parts in his house, that his neighbor was a murderer.”
“ Checks?”
“ Visual turned up negative.”
“ Search of the interior?”
“ None warranted by the visiting officers.”
“ How often they visit this location. Sergeant?”
“ Three times since January!”
“ Never searched the location?” She thought of the awful Jeffrey Dahmer case in Milwaukee, almost two years before.
“ Lady, the complainant was arrested.”
“ On what charge?”
“ Exposing himself to a female officer, ma'am… ahh. Doctor.”
She inwardly moaned before hanging up.
# # #
Otto Boutine and Joe Brewer kept tripping over one name, a salesman at Balue-Stork whose route had taken him to every key location in the investigation of the Tort 9 killings, Matthew Matisak. But there were holes in the records, some showing visits of only once over a seven-month period which the personnel lady could not account for. She said they would have to talk to Matisak's immediate supervisor, a man named Sarafian.
It was past eleven, and Sarafian had to be disturbed at home and escorted in by police sent to his home to pick him up. The entire Lowenthal affair had turned the company into something of a morgue, no one wishing to be sucked into the investigation. The entire time the FBI men were thrashing through the records they requested, the Balue-Stork public relations man, a V.P. and a board member had assembled to quell the disturbances as best they could, but Otto Boutine was having none of it.
When Sarafian was brought in in an overcoat covering his pajamas, the man was outraged, shouting that he was prepared to sue the bastards responsible.
Otto Boutine interrupted him and faced him down, saying, “I'm the bastard you'll be suing, then. I'm Inspector Otto Boutine, FBI Division Chief.”
Sarafian was visibly taken aback. “Well… FBI. Has to do with that poor bastard Lowenthal, then.”
“ Yes, it does. But we'd also like to talk to you about a man named Matisak.”
Sarafian's eyes, a distant, dark brown, shone with a shimmery, water-and-light quality that indicated to the experienced FBI men that they had struck a chord. “Can you explain why some of his travel records and expense reports are missing from his file?”
“ Backlog, maybe. We're always short of capable filing clerks. Get the worst in here from a service, and things are lost. But why're you interested in Matisak? I thought you people decided Lowenthal was the… the murderer?”
“ What can you tell us about Matisak?”
Sarafian's shoulders raised. “Strange bird, personality-wise. Doesn't associate, but he's a good man in the field. Has some physical problems that he works hard to overcome.”
“ Handicapped?”
“ No, wouldn't call it that.”
“ What, then?”
He went to a nearby wall and pulled down a photo of a group. “The sales force.”
Otto picked him out of ten men immediately. Matisak fit the profile, both in age and appearance, his features scarred by some childhood disease or porphyria. “Do you know if he is on any medication?”
“ I've seen him popping pills, sure.”
“ What sort?”
“ Couldn't say. Got it from a doctor in Indianapolis. One of our clients. The man complained that Matisak kept after him for freebies.”
“ We'll need the man's name.”
“ Grubber. Dr. Stanley Grubber.”
“ Where can he be reached?” pressed Brewer.
“ St. Luke's Hospital.”
Brewer gritted his teeth. “Sonofabitch,” he muttered.
“ What?” asked Sarafian.
“ Never mind, Sarafian. Just get us an address on Matisak, now! And you,” said Boutine, pointing to the personnel woman, “get St. Luke's in Indianapolis on the phone and get a number for this guy Grubber pronto!”
An incoming telephone call was for Brewer. He took it at a far desk, covering the mouthpiece with his hand. In a comer, he began asking questions of the caller.
“ When? When did the call come in? Did she say anything else? Christ. All right. What?”
“ What's going on, Joe?” Boutine asked his friend.
Joe Brewer stared at Otto, their eyes meeting.
“ What the fuck is it, Joe?”
“ He's… According to Dr. Coran, someone called her tonight at the crime lab, and she believes it was our killer.”
“ Matisak?”
“ Maybe. Maybe just a crank call.”
“ Give me that phone.”
Boutine hurriedly dialed the number for the crime lab, but he found that Jessica had left hours before.
He quickly dialed for the Lincolnshire Inn, getting a wrong number, cursing and asking for operator assistance. When he got through, he found no one answering Jessica's number.
“ Christ, Joe, if anything's happened to her-”Now, don't go jumping to conclusions, Otto. We've just got to go methodical here. Get Matisak's address and-” Otto rushed at Sarafian, who held up a card with Matisak's address on it. “I'm on my way out there, Joe. You coming?”
“ Damned right, but what about a warrant?”
“ Fuck the warrant. We have cause, provocation-the records showing his usual route, the fact some have been pilfered, to cover his tracks, his association with Lowenthal, Sarafian's eyes.”
“ Sarafian's eyes won't help us in a court of law.”
“ And no goddamned warrant is going to help Jess if this bastard has her.”
They raced from the squat factory building of Balue-Stork with Sarafian and the others staring after them, Sarafian saying, “I always knew that Matisak was weird, but I never in a million years-”
“ That's what you said about Lowenthal!” shouted Sarafian's boss. “This could destroy us in the medical community, damn! Damn! Sarafian, pack your belongings!”?