COLD CASE - Chapter 6

I spent the morning in the library, then I went back to my hotel room and dug Bob out of his traveling case.

"Kolchak died in Los Angeles, back in 2006," I told him.

"Damn," Bob growled regretfully. "Did you find out anything about him?"

I flopped down in a chair and opened my Burger King bag.

"Once upon a time, Kolchak was fairly well known. He worked for some big papers in New York, Chicago, and Boston and broke some fairly important stories. But if you read between the lines - all of the times he moved from paper to paper - he had a problem keeping a job. Apparently he hit the skids in the late sixties. He ended up here in Las Vegas in late 1968 and began working for a second-string local paper called the Las Vegas Evening News. After the Skorzeny killings he fell off the map for a while. Then he eventually ended up in Chicago, working for a small-time press service."

"Chicago?"

I nodded, "I've already called Murphy. She said she'd ask around."

"Did Kolchak write any articles about Skorzeny?"

"The Evening News closed down years ago and, oddly enough, the municipal library and the university library don't seem to have any copies - physical or on microfiche - of the Evening News for the months of May and June of 1970."

"Funny that," Bob said dryly.

"Very funny," I agreed as I took a bite out of my burger.

"So Kolchak's a dead-end until Murphy gets back to you?"

I had finish my mouthful of burger before I could answer. "Not completely. I checked up on the local journalists. There's a lady named Edna Worth who works for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. She's a columnist nowadays, but she was around when Skorzeny was running amok. I'm interested to hear what she has to say about Skorzeny. And she just might have known Kolchak."

"Janos Skorzeny and Carl Kolchak," Edna Worth said slowly.

I nodded.

"Wow," she said - stretching the word out.

We were sitting in her office. It was a tiny room so packed with books, magazines, and newspapers that I had to turn sideways and wiggle my way to the visitor's chair. Edna was almost hidden behind the material that was piled-up on her desk. She was a small, grandmotherly-looking woman with rectangular glasses. It was easier to imagine her baking cookies for a pack of grandkids than working in that office.

I waited for Edna to decide what she was going to say.

"There was a time when mentioning the name Janos Skorzeny was a big no-no," she finally said. "The word was out that getting too interested in him would cost you your job. That's pretty much what happened to Carl."

I leaned forward, "You knew Kolchak?"

Edna let out a full-throated belly-laugh. "Did I know Carl? Of course I did! He was one of the best reporters I ever met. And he didn't mind talking to a newly hired so-called 'girl reporter'. Believe me, that was a rarity in those days. Most of the other reporters at the time assumed I was around to fetch coffee and dutifully accept the occasional pat on the ass. Carl was actually decent to me."

Then her face fell, "Carl passed away a few years ago. I didn't hear about it until a few months later. I missed his funeral."

I let her have a few seconds for regret before I continued. "You say he lost his job because of the Skorzeny murders?"

With a slight shake of her head, Edna came back to the present. "That was the story going around town at the time. You have to understand, Mr. Dresden, the mob had a lot more influence back in those days. And that colored how everything was done in this town. Sometimes it seemed as if the police were just the biggest gang around - not law-enforcement officers. And the casinos openly owned city councilmen and the occasional mayor. Carl kept pushing on the subject of Skorzeny and eventually someone decided to push back."

"What was the problem?" I asked.

Edna hesitated. "Carl had some wild ideas about Skorzeny. Ideas that if they got out might have slowed down the tourist trade that kept this town alive. Somebody important decided that wasn't going to happen. The next thing you knew, Carl and a bunch of other people suddenly decided to leave town. And some folks just plain vanished."

"What did Kolchak know that was so dangerous?"

With a sigh, Mrs Worth said, "He thought Skorzeny wasn't really human. That he was... something else."

"Something else? What kind of something else?"

Edna gave me a long, long look. "Mr. Dresden... you've read about the Skorzeny case?"

"Some," I admitted.

"If someone was willing to color outside of the lines, and they were looking at the events surrounding Janos Skorzeny, what conclusion do you suppose they might come to?"

Edna was testing me. I had to put up of shut up.

I looked Edna in the eyes. "It wouldn't be completely crazy to decide that Skorzeny wasn't just a nut who thought he was a vampire. That he actually was a vampire."

Edna relaxed. "That's what Carl thought. And some people say he more than thought it. He proved it."

"What do you think, Edna?"

She smiled at me. "I'm not a young woman, Mr. Dresden. In fact, I'm old enough that I'm allowed to be a bit eccentric. However, I also have to be careful. If I'm too eccentric, then I'll be politely informed that it's time to retire. And I really like my job."

"I understand. Look, anything you tell me about Skorzeny and Kolchak is off the record. Your name won't be mentioned if I use any of what you tell me in my report."

Edna leaned forward, her eyes suddenly intense. When you got down to it, she was a journalist. She wanted to tell the story.

"Carl got deep into the Skorzeny case. Deeper even than the cops. Eventually, he decided that Skorzeny was the real thing - an actual vampire. He tried to tell the authorities, but they weren't buying what Carl was telling them."

"Carl eventually found out where Skorzeny lived. Then he broke in and pounded a wooden stake through Skorzeny's chest. A friend of Carl's - an FBI agent named Bernie Jenks - apparently helped Carl do the deed. Also in the house was a woman named Shelley Forbes. Skorzeny was feeding off of her. He would drink her blood until she was almost dead, then he would fill her up with blood he'd stolen from local hospitals, and then feed from her again."

"The authorities used Skorzeny's death against Carl. They told him that unless he got out of town he'd end up in prison or an asylum. Nobody was on Kolchak's side, because if they were then they'd have to admit that they also thought that Skorzeny was an actual vampire. So Carl didn't have any choice but to leave."

"But Carl wasn't the only person to get his walking papers. The editor of the Evening News - a fellow named Tony Vincenzo - was allowed to resign, but he also had to leave town. The witnesses in the Skorzeny case all either got real quiet, suddenly left town, or just plain vanished. The legal system produced a grand jury report and then lost all of the evidence. Eventually, almost all of the official paperwork about the case also went missing. The local media dropped the story as soon as reasonably possible. And I've noticed that you can't seem to find any newspapers from the time. Likewise, none of the TV stations seem to have any tape about the Skorzeny murders."

"You said some people actually vanished in the cover-up?" I asked slowly.

She nodded. "Yeah, but you might not want to read too much into that. Las Vegas has always been full of people who are just passing through - and are maybe a little shady. Some folks might have just assumed that being told to get out of town was a good sign that is was time to take on a new identity. That was a lot easier to do back in those days."

Then Edna frowned. "But there was one disappearance that really bothered me. Carl had a girlfriend, a pretty casino hostess named Gail Foster. Word was that he was going to ask her to marry him. She was one of the people who vanished. After he left town, Carl spent some time trying to find her. I know that because he asked me about her a couple of times. But he didn't have any luck."

"What happened to Kolchak after he left town?"

A regretful expression came over Edna's face. "Carl's career was already on the downside when he came to Las Vegas. He... well he wouldn't back off once he got his teeth into a story. He pissed off a lot of people. So he got fired from a bunch of big papers. After he was thrown out of Las Vegas, he wasted a lot of time trying to convince someone to print his story about Skorzeny. There were no takers, but in the process he convinced just about everyone in the business that he was a nut. The only thing that kept him in journalism was Tony Vincenzo."

"His editor here in Las Vegas?"

Edna nodded. "Yes. Tony and Carl had a pretty strange relationship. Tony respected Carl as a reporter - and maybe regretted his role in allowing Carl to be fired and in covering up the Skorzeny story. Tony eventually ended up as an editor for a Seattle paper, and he hired Kolchak. Then, believe it or not, they both got fired again."

I think my eyebrows rose about a yard.

"I don't know the details about what happened in Seattle," Edna continued, "but apparently Carl ran into another serial killer that he figured had a supernatural explanation. The paper owner didn't buy it, so Carl got fired. And then Tony got fired for hiring Carl and letting him run wild."

"What happened then?"

"Tony got a job working for something called the Independent News Service. It was a down-and-mostly-out press service based out of Chicago. It was obviously a dead end, but it was all that Tony could manage. And then he hired Kolchak again."

"You're kidding!" I said in amazement. "Was Vincenzo a saint or just a glutton for punishment?"

"He was Carl's friend. He didn't want to admit it, but he was."

"How long did they last at the press service?"

"Amazingly enough, they managed to hang on. I hear that Carl kept running into strange stories, but Tony reigned in the worst of Carl's excesses. I think by that time they were so far down on the news media food chain that they just weren't a real threat to anyone. And I hear that Tony had a pretty good relationship with the guy who owned Independent News Service. So they managed to keep their jobs for longer than you might think."

"When did that end?"

"Tony died on the job back in 1983. A heart attack got him. Carl only lasted a few months under the new editor. But somebody upstairs in INS must have had a soft-spot for him. He got an early retirement deal instead of being thrown out onto the street."

Edna paused. Then she closed her eyes. "After that, Carl wandered around, pursuing stories on his own that nobody would print. He didn't have a paper, but he just couldn't stop being a newspaperman."

The last word came out kind of choked. I took a sudden interest in the barely visible window while Edna wiped her eyes.

"Carl finally settled down in California sometime in the '90s," Edna continued, her voice stronger now. "We met a few times for dinner and drinks. After the internet became a thing, I tried to talk him into starting a web-site, but he just laughed and asked me where you poured the ink into a computer. By then, he was a relic from a different era."

"He sounds like he was quite a man," I said quietly. And I meant it.

Edna gave me a sharp look. "Carl fought things that other people didn't even want to admit existed. He saved lives, Mr. Dresden. And damn few people know it."