Incubus Dreams - Laurell K. Hamilton [295]
“Not in the bedroom, but the bed,” I said.
He nodded.
“Do we have an ident on her?”
Funny, he didn’t ask who “her” referred to. “Purse is beside the bed with her neatly folded clothes. Sally Cook, age twenty-four, 5'3", and I never believe the weight on a woman’s driver’s license.”
“Yeah, women fudge the weight, but men will add an inch to their height.”
He grinned at me. “Most of us just aren’t smart enough to remember how tall we are.”
I smiled at him and resisted the urge to punch him on the shoulder. He can have that effect on me, even at murder scenes.
“I noticed you were doing fingertip push-ups looking at the body. You messed up our blood pattern.”
“I wasn’t doing push-ups, and I touched as little as I could. But I know why she bled out, at least partly why.”
“Talk,” he said, he was starting to sound like Dolph. Not a bad a thing, just a little unnerving.
“She’s got a partial bite mark on her very inner thigh. Looks like it punctured her femoral.”
“Why did you say ‘partial’ bite mark? Either he bit her, or he didn’t.”
I shrugged. “He bit her, but it looks almost like he started, then either she jerked away, or he wasn’t able to finish. For lack of a better analogy, it’s like being bitten by a snake. If it’s not poisonous, you’re better off not jerking away. Vampire fangs are recurved not as much as most snake teeth, but still, if you pull away abruptly, you’re going to tear yourself up worse than if you just let it chew on you and try to pry it off, sort of gently.”
“It’s instinct to pull away from something that’s biting you, Anita.”
“I’m not arguing that, Zerbrowski, I’m only saying that it’s not a good idea. You will tear yourself up.”
“So he bit her, and she pulled away, and that tore her femoral open. Are you saying he didn’t mean to kill her?”
I shrugged. “I’m saying that you can bleed out from your femoral in about twenty minutes, maybe less. Most people don’t understand that.”
“Anita, don’t do this to me.”
“Do what?” I asked.
“I saved the best for last. She’s got a little case in there with what sure as hell looks like a stripper outfit to me. All fringes and not much else. If she’s a stripper, then we’ve got one of our vampires. But you’re standing here telling me that he didn’t mean to kill her. If that’s true, then he isn’t one of our guys. I’m in the process of getting you a warrant of execution for his ass. I’d hate to have you killing the wrong guy.”
I shook my head. “He was responsible for her death, Zerbrowski. The way the law is written, he’s dead either way. If he’s part of our serial killer team, he’s dead. If he accidentally nicked her femoral and either didn’t know enough to call 911, or panicked, or maybe dawn caught him before he could finish. It doesn’t matter which it was, by accident or by design. The law says it’s murder when a vampire kills a human being using its bite. There is no charge of manslaughter, if you’re a vampire.”
Zerbrowski looked at me, and his eyes were very serious behind his wire rimmed glasses. “You think it was an accident, don’t you?”
I shrugged again. “If he meant to rip her femoral open, I think the bite would be different, more vicious. I’ve seen a lot of vamp kills, Zerbrowski, a lot. This looks like a new vamp, a really new one, that doesn’t know how to use its fangs yet. Someone who’s two years dead shouldn’t make mistakes like this.”
“So he did it on purpose.”
I sighed. “I’m beginning to wonder what kind of education the little vampires at the Church of Eternal Life are getting.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, that I thought their mentoring system was like most of the wereanimals that I know. You teach the rookies how to hunt, how to kill, clean, and efficiently.”
“You confessing to something for your furry friends?” he asked, and he wasn’t smiling enough for the comment, not for my peace of mind.
“Animals, Zerbrowski, animals. Jean-Claude hasn’t brought over any new vamps