The room was cold. In the center lay a mutilated corpse on a steel autopsy table. “This is the fourth victim in three weeks,” Detective James Harding said. Stripped of his clothes, the middle-aged man was still, his eyes staring at the ceiling, his mouth slightly parted. Two puncture wounds were hidden deep within a purple and black bruise on his neck. Microscopic flakes of dried blood around the wounds screamed the cause of death to Chief Inspector Raelynn Bravos.
Inspector Bravos stood next to Detective Harding holding a small notebook and pen. She gently touched the pen to her lips, pursing them. A notification chimed from her back pocket. She looked at the screen briefly before showing it to Harding. “Well, turns out he was a pedophile, too. Spinoza just sent his rap sheet. He’s sending you a copy now. If you ask me, the world is better off without these assholes roaming the streets.”
Harding’s head snapped up, his eyes widened then narrowed. His silent judgment hung thick in the air. “Are you seriously supporting a vigilante?” He put his hands on his hips and gave her his best I’m-disappointed-in-you look. He was always eager to hand out his disappointment to her. “They undermine our authority and make us look weak. They mock our justice system. It’s disgusting.” He scoffed.
She shrugged. “If he’s going to keep killing guys like this, I can’t honestly say I want to catch him. What did the ladies say was the cause of death?”
“Blood loss,” Harding said crossing his arms.
Bravos glanced briefly at Harding, raising her eyebrows. He nodded. She tilted her head as she shifted her gaze to the stark white corpse on the autopsy table. As she leaned over the body, she put her hands behind her back. Bravos closed her eyes and let the ether wash over her. As she inhaled deeply her mind soaked in all the details not visible to the human eye.
“Is it common for victims to die of blood loss with no major trauma?” Bravos asked. She resumed her proud upright stance and clicked her pen.
“No,” Harding said flatly. “This is a mystery. I feel like Sherlock Holmes, you know the Robert Downy Jr one?”
“No, it’s not a mystery at all,” Bravos thought. “We’re dealing with a high-level vampire. Not that I could tell Harding that.”
Instead, she giggled. “If anything, Harding, you’re Watson. But you’re not even cool enough for that.” She brushed her bouncy black hair out of her eyes and flashed her bright smile at him. Harding scoffed in mock offense. A sigh escaped her lips as Bravos said, “We better get to work. If this is anything like the movies, we have quite the adventure ahead of us.” She pivoted on her right heel and walked out of the examination room.
***
A few days later Bravos was resting in her office. She slowly sipped a cup of steaming chamomile tea as she examined the room. The desk was littered with open files and notebooks. A map of their district covered one wall. There were colored pins stuck into it, with red and black lines of tape crossing here and there. On the opposite wall sat a dark stained oak bookcase filled with criminal law books, legal dictionaries, old case files, and shelf after shelf of journals. The center held a glass case with a folded American flag, a badge, and a photo of an older woman in uniform.
A knock on her door disrupted this mid-afternoon meditation. She sighed, annoyed at the interruption. She closed her eyes again to feel into the ether. Despite the headache this gave her, it was necessary to know who was at the door. Permission to enter her space could not be revoked.
“Enter.”
“Sorry to bother you, Chief.” A small, scrawny man with wire-rimmed glasses and ruffled copper hair stepped inside the threshold.
“What do you have for me, Ezra? Did you find out anything more about the latest victim?”
“Well, no, ma’am,” Ezra muttered. He cleared his throat. “It’s Detective Harding, he’s asked you to meet him downtown straight away.”
“Did he say why?” Bravos furrowed her brow and gently placed her cup of tea down in the only empty space on her desk.
“He did not, ma’am. Just said it was urgent. Here’s the address.” Ezra’s hand shook slightly as he gave her a yellow sticky note with an address scribbled in blue ink.
583 Knoxville Avenue, Room 8
Bravos studied the tiny scrap of paper. “Is this the victim’s address?”
Ezra pushed up his glasses and squinted at her. He swallowed hard. “Uh, well, uh no ma’am. I believe there has been another victim. I can go verify that for you if you’d like.”
Bravos squinted at Ezra thinking to herself, “Well you probably should have done that before you rushed in here and interrupted my tea time.” But she just sighed. “No, Ezra, thank you. This will do fine.” She smiled gently and placed her hand on his back as she led him out of her office. “Why don’t you try some chamomile tea? It does wonders for anxiety.”
“Right, yes. I will, ma’am.”
Bravos swung her coat over her shoulders. The door got in the way and she hit her elbow. Her satchel was on Ezra’s desk again. “Why do I keep leaving that there?” she wondered as she took the satchel. “I’ll be back,” she said and walked out the door.
***
“No sign of forced entry,” Harding said, studying a windowsill very closely. The place was immaculately clean. Bravos had no idea what he expected to find there. “Forensics says this place is clean. Not even a stray fiber so far.”
“This new team is really good. If there’s anything to find, they’ll find it. I’m really not surprised by the results. I doubt there is anything worth finding. This guy has never left us anything before. And look at this place. It’s spotless. I wish I could keep my apartment like this.”
“True, he doesn’t usually leave anything for us to find. But all of the other victims were killed outside. This is his first home invasion as far as we know.”
“He’s getting braver,” Bravos said looking around the tiny room. “Or maybe he’s panicking.”
“Why would he panic?”
“Dunno. Just an idea. A change in MO doesn’t happen. There’s a reason. The sooner we figure out why, the closer we’ll be to catching this guy.”
“What are you thinking?” Harding glared at her as if trying to read her thoughts.
She blushed and looked away. “He can’t read my thoughts. But I can read his. Unbelievable. How could he be thinking things like that in a place like this?”
She coughed and shook the hair out of her eyes as she opened her notebook. With a click, her pen was ready for action. “Why did you call me down here? Ezra told me you said it was urgent.”
“Come over here,” Harding said, leading her to the victim’s bed. He pulled back the sheet. There were strands of dried garlic lining the bed, a wooden stake sharpened to a lethal point, and a small silver crucifix tucked under the pillow.
“Vampires?” Bravos laughed. She couldn’t help it. It always made her laugh at how easily the Unified League’s propaganda worked on humans. “Yes,” she thought to herself, “Grab some garlic. That will definitely stop a vampire.”
“Yeah,” Harding replied as he stifled a laugh of his own. “Apparently he was convinced a vampire was hunting him. The team spoke to some of the other tenants. He wouldn’t leave his room, wouldn’t let anyone in.”
“Interesting,” Bravos said, “he was clearly afraid someone was coming after him. But it’s probably not a vampire.”
“Obviously,” Harding said.
There was a long pause as Bravos stared at him. “It might be our killer though,” she said shaking her head. The pen scratched her notebook page as she scribbled some notes down. A moment later she flipped the cover closed. “Anything else, Detective?”
“I think you’ve seen everything. I’ll send you the reports as soon as we’re done processing the scene.”
“Good. You start looking into this guy. Find out who he was in contact with the last few weeks.” She paused, then added, “Check his criminal record too.”
Harding had gone back to studying the windowsill. “Already did. He’s a perv just like the rest,” he said absently as he waved her off.
***
Bravos dropped into her desk chair. She gave the cold cup of chamomile tea a disgusted look. The bookcase caught her attention. The glass cabinet with her sister’s flag kept glinting in just the right spot to be annoying. As she looked around the room to locate the origin of the offending light, Bravos noticed something. It was a photo of her and some of her colleagues. One of them stood out, Jarod Salazar.
In the photo, Bravos and four other colleagues all huddled together at a local nightclub. She remembered the adventure fondly. The team had just won a difficult conviction and were out to celebrate. She hadn’t known Salazar well. He was just one of the lab workers. But she remembered he was in some type of supervisory position. It was actually his research that tipped the scales on the conviction.
Bravos noticed Jarod right away at the nightclub. First of all, he was gorgeous. But more importantly, he was wearing sunglasses. She remembered thinking that was odd. Everyone had always shrugged it off as some quirk or even a cover for drug use. But now…
The phone rang loudly. It jolted her from her thoughts. She jumped and scrambled to answer it, nearly knocking her cold tea over in the process.
“Hello?” she said before correcting herself, “Chief Inspector Bravos here. Go ahead.”
“Still getting used to the new role, Rae?” Harding said.
Bravos laughed softly and said, “Yeah. What’s up, Harding? You scared me.”
“Well, this will scare you even more. I found something when I was looking into the vic’s bookshelf.” Harding paused for a long time. Bravos finally realized he was expecting her to guess.
“Just tell me,” she said.
“It’s a photo of the vic with Jarod Salazar. You remember him, right? Weird Lab Rat that came out with us that one time?”
“The ether is shouting at me,” thought Bravos.
“Yeah, I remember him.”
“That’s it? No enthusiasm? We always thought this was someone on the inside. This guy is as inside as it gets. He receives all the reports, covers all the DNA requests, he’s got access to everything!” Harding shouted.
“Calm down, Harding. We can’t just assume, right? We need evidence. I’m not saying you’re wrong, because my gut tells me you’re not. But it doesn’t matter what we know.”
“It matters what we can prove,” Harding muttered. The disappointment in his voice was thick.
“Hey, do me a favor?”
“Anything, Rae.”
Bravos rolled her eyes, “Keep this under wraps for a few days, ok? I don’t want Jarod to get wind of any of this. I mean it. Tell no one.” She paused then added, “And avoid him at all costs.”
“Why?” Harding asked sounding more than a bit offended.
“That’s an order, Harding.”
Bravos hung up the phone and kept her hand on it for a few seconds too long. She stared at her sister’s flag again. As if drawn by some unseen force, she stood up and walked towards it. “What are you trying to tell me, Vi? Is this the guy that got you? Give me a clue. Something. I can’t just accuse an associate without rock-solid evidence. What do I do?”
One of the pins on the district map fell down. Bravos heard the soft clink and went over to grab it. As she was searching for the right place to return it to, she noticed a figure standing in her doorway. It was Jarod.
“Can I help you?” she said careful not to give him permission to enter.
“May I come in, Inspector? I’ve got something important to discuss with you.”
“Shit,” she panicked and thought to herself, “it’s definitely him. I hope he can’t read my thoughts. He shouldn’t be able to, not with all the wards I’ve put up.”
“Well,” Jarod said after an awkward pause. Bravos continued to stare at him.
She pushed the pin back into place with her thumb. Making a show of glancing out the window, she said “It’s so nice out. Plus, I need to stretch my legs. We can have a chat outside.”
Jarod looked puzzled for the briefest of moments. Then came a flash of anger which he quickly disguised with a sly grin.
“Of course. Can’t let just anyone into the new Chief Inspector’s office now can we? Let’s walk to the Ink Pot and grab a coffee. I’ve stumbled onto something interesting. I’d like your opinion.”
“I don’t drink coffee,” Bravos said as she glared again at the cold cup of chamomile. “But I could go for some tea.”
NEXT: The Hunters: Lunch with a Vampire
