Violets Are Blue - James Patterson [47]
Did they drink the blood here in the cathedral? Was this about sacrilege? Religion? The stations of the cross?
Kyle and I approached Stephen Fenton. A body bag was already laid out in the nave. Technicians from the Savannah Police Department stood by. They were restless and angry, anxious to do their work and get out of there. We were holding them up. The local medical examiner was doing his examination of the body.
Kyle and I knelt over the body together. I pulled on a pair of plastic gloves. Kyle almost never used them. He rarely seemed to touch evidence at a crime scene. I had always wondered why. His instincts were good, though.
But if we were both so good, why didn’t we have any clue as to where the killers had gone or when they might strike next? That was the question that nagged me more and more at each murder site. What was this gruesome rampage about?
“They’re so goddamn impulsive,” I muttered to Kyle. “I suspect they’re both under thirty. Maybe early twenties or even younger. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were in their late teens.”
“Makes sense to me. They don’t seem to have any fear at all.” Kyle spoke softly as he looked at the student’s wounds. “It’s as if a wild animal has been turned loose. Like the tiger. First in California. Now here on the East Coast. The problem is that we don’t really know how far back the killings go, or how many killers are involved, or even if they’re working out of this country.”
“That’s three problems. Three subsets that require answers we don’t have. Your agents still talking to people at the Goth and vampire clubs? The Internet? Somebody has to know something.”
“If anybody knows, they’re keeping it to themselves. I have over three hundred agents full-time on this case, Alex. We can’t keep this heat up.”
I looked up at the wooden station of the cross. It depicted Jesus being taken down from the cross and laid in his mother’s arms. The crown of thorns. The Crucifixion. Piercings. Blood. Was blood the connection here? Eternal life? I wondered. In Santa Barbara, Peter Westin had mentioned that some vampires were spiritual. Was this a ritual killing or a random one? Should I talk to Peter Westin again? He seemed to know more about vampires than anyone else I’d met.
The victim was wearing khaki trousers and new Reebok sneakers. I examined the wounds to his neck. There were also gouges on his left shoulder and parts of the upper chest. One or both of the killers was very angry, close to a rage state.
“Why take the shirt?” Kyle asked. “Same thing in Marin.”
“Maybe because it was blood soaked,” I answered as I continued to look at the student’s wounds. “These are definitely human bites. But they’re attacking like animals. The tiger is a model, a symbol, something important. What, though?”
Kyle’s cell phone sounded, and he flipped it open. I couldn’t help thinking of the Mastermind — his constant calls to me. Kyle listened to whoever it was for about twenty seconds.
Then he turned to me. “We’re going to Charlotte right now. There’s been another murder, Alex. They struck again. They’re already in North Carolina.”
“God damn them! What the hell are they doing?”
Kyle and I raced toward the doors of the cathedral. We ran as if we were being chased.
Chapter 48
EVERY ONCE in a while, a single murder, or a series of murders, horrifies us, catches the public’s imagination in an almost obscene way. Jeffrey Dahmer’s bizarre spree in Milwaukee; the murder of Gianni Versace and subsequent killings by Andrew Philip Cunanan; the Russian, Andrei Chikatilo, reputed to be the worst. Now this bloody rampage on two coasts of the United States.
It was fortunate that we had the FBI helicopter to get us out of Savannah and over to Charlotte. While we were still in the air, Kyle was in contact with his operators on the ground, who had surrounded a ramshackle farmhouse about fourteen miles outside Charlotte. I had never seen Kyle so animated and excited about a case before, not even Casanova or the