Chapter Ten
The Vampire's Lair
If hopes could translate into reality it wouldn't be another series of long hours with no progress to show for them. After a time, even Gibbs ceases demanding updates, lets his people work in silence instead as the painful minutes stretch into agonizing hours. Catching a maniac is one thing, finding him quite another. With no activity on his bank account after a massive withdrawal, no phone or any other record activity, no credit card activity, no witnesses, not even an image on any usable surveillance cameras in the neighborhood of Starbase 86 from which to commence a search, they are reduced to eyewitness reports from where he'd made his attacks to establish – or try to establish – a base zone in which to search.
Unfortunately, rather than confining his hunting ground to a small area, he'd spread his rampage over vast distances, so even with several teams to call upon for the legwork, it's a matter of getting onto the street and searching.
Gibbs has kept his own team confined to their desks, coordinating incoming reports, but it's both tedious and frustrating. Kevin Dobbs a.k.a. John Vincent DeKalb, has dropped off the face of the earth. Late afternoon passes into early evening with frustrating tedium for the agents, then DiNozzo looks up from his monitor, "Boss, I think I've found something."
"Fang dentists?" Gibbs demands as he strides across the bullpen. He'd given the research job to him after the meeting with Oberon.
"Sorry, I've been tied up. There are six in the area but I haven't gotten on them."
"Ziva, you've got them. What've you got, DiNozzo?"
"I was tracing Kevin Dobbs backward through the places he and his mother lived when he wasn't in Juvie or Asylums. Apparently they bounced around a lot as she looked for places he wasn't known." He continues talking while typing rapidly. "I admit I'm left with just my gut."
"Gut is good, DiNozzo."
"I sure hope so. From 1991 to 1994 they lived in Wythe, three blocks from a house that in 2002 went under for Foreclosure and was abandoned. Apparently in its declining years it was quite a fixer-upper."
He brings up on the plasma screen a high altitude photo, a Google satellite image barely resolving into a two story house. Specialized software further resolves the image, allowing him to focus more closely. Since the house had been on the outer edge of the image it's not shown at a perpendicular angle. He then shifts to another on-line program offering street-level views.
These, taken in a panoramic view from two blocks away from a junkyard that ends the street, show the forward edge of the building. DiNozzo works to improve the image, sharpening it until they can make out a structure at the end of the dead end. It's so dilapidated it instantly fits their mental image of a vampire's lair. Paint has peeled from most of its surface, windows are boarded up, and the front yard is thick with trash.
"How is it we didn't see this place sooner?"
It's barely necessary to answer that. "The property is on a back road next to an auto junkyard, basically just stacks of wrecked cars, I suppose kind of like Abby's old place? It's pretty much ignored and forgotten. It's on the Foreclosure / Resale / Urban Renewal list for the past couple of years, no one's touching it. Except maybe your friendly neighborhood vampire-man, that is."
Gibbs stares at the wreck, reluctant to make the call. In one sense it fits the stereotype of a vampire's lair, in another: "It fits too damned well."
"Boss?" McGee prompts.
"Only a brain dead moron would use that as a secret hideout."
"A brain dead moron," Ziva contends, "who bites women and drinks their blood?"
He doesn't like feeling the fool, but, "You're right, we have to check it out, if only to eliminate the ludicrous. Gear up."
xxx
Forty minutes later, still with the feeling that he is being made to look like a fool, a very aggravated Gibbs stands with DiNozzo, McGee and David before the gate of the real life 'haunted house'. The dilapidated home is long past its demolition time, and had probably seen its last good day before President Nixon had.
"Let's get this over with so we can get back to work." Gibbs pushes open the metal gate, having to use considerably more force than should be necessary to move the rust clogged hinges. They cross the overgrown, rubbish strewn path to the low deck whose warped boards have probably not known the weight of a human in years. They stop at the wooden door, Gibbs wondering when it was last opened. Considering the lock covered with rust, it's been far too many years.
"Ziva."
She shakes her head. "I am not ruining my tools on that thing."
Not inclined to blame nor chastise her, Gibbs decides on a more satisfying method of gaining admittance and easing his aggravation. A hard kick blasts the door inward in a rain of dust and debris. The interior is black, well boarded windows keeping out the light.
DiNozzo looks from the blackness back to Gibbs. "Is this a bad time to mention my on-going phobia about vampires?"
"You'd better have more of a phobia about me. Five minutes."
They pull out flashlights. "Bet I can do it in three."
"Then lead the way."
"When will I keep my mouth shut?"
"Been wondering about that for years."
x
By the probing beams of four flashlights they scan the sparsely furnished living room, every surface covered with a thick cake of dust. There's a small collection of furniture remaining, probably such things as were abandoned by the owner upon foreclosure, and a staircase against the left wall leads upstairs. The air is smoky in the beams from the dust raised in the door's opening.
"Not a–"
DiNozzo is cut short by the sound of McGee's Sig clearing its holster, the beam of his flash rapidly scanning every corner of the room. Three more guns are immediately in hands and aimed about the room before the first scan is complete.
"What've you got?" Gibbs demands, his back to the others, his Sig covering the door leading to a hallway to the left. He doesn't have to glance to know the other quarters of the room are similarly covered.
Not relaxing his vigilance, McGee angles his light to a table across the room and there's no need for words. Upon that table are the only items not covered by dust; a half burned candle and a stack of variously colored panties and bras, many stained with dried blood.
"I ever tell you," DiNozzo asks no one in particular, "how much I hate Halloween?"
x
"Costa still had her underwear," Gibbs reminds them.
"She had white underwear," Ziva points out. The piles contain a variety of colors Costa wouldn't have worn under a white uniform.
"I count four matching sets," McGee announces. Inspection of the pile will undoubtedly reveal many more.
Gibbs isn't going to admit aggravation had led him to forget a back door. He'll give himself a wake-up slap later. "Let's get this bastard."
"I'm sure he heard you knock," DiNozzo warns.
x
A thorough, tandem inspection of the four rooms on the main floor yields neither a vampire nor a hiding place for one. It does, however, reveal a working back door in the kitchen. A close inspection with the flashlights reveals, in dust and rust, that this door has been used recently, probably frequently.
"Sun hasn't set yet," DiNozzo points out.
"Not even close."
"Boss?" McGee's light is trained on another door, perhaps to the basement. They converge at that door.
"DiNozzo, David, you've got upstairs. McGee, you're with me." He's not happy to split the team, but doesn't want DeKalb flanking them and escaping. He doesn't trust that DeKalb will be sleeping with the afternoon sun shining; psychosis must surely give way to survival instincts. "Remember, this bastard threw two grown women ten feet. You see him, you take him out."
As Ziva and Tony head for the upward stairs in the living room, Gibbs shines his light into the black depths. Looking down into the abyss, McGee doesn't want to go in but there's no choice. The only thing worse than facing a homicidal, super-strong psychopath, in pitch darkness, is admitting fear to Gibbs.
Together they descend the creaking steps, knowing there is no way to disguise their approach. The beams of their flashes slice through the blackness, marking their positions, but they don't find a murderous vampire.
The discovery they make is far worse.
x
The black basement is a single vast space filled with row upon row of coffins, four or more to a row, thirteen in all. The polished wood reflects the beams of the flashes that pass over them. The ones furthest away, near the wall, reflect slightly less well, their gleam dimmed by dust.
What they all have in common are silver hasps and padlocks holding the lids in place.
They step up to the nearest coffin, finding none that are not secured. "McGee, can your phone camera thingy get pictures in this light?" There are only the two flashes for illumination.
"I can enhance the images to as bright as we need," he assures him, tucking the flashlight under his arm and pulling out his phone. "Still or video?"
Gibbs hadn't forgotten the option on McGee's new phone since he'd broken up the catfight in Operations. "Video." He scans the room, the beam spearing a pegboard above a worktable across the room, upon which hang various tools. Crossing to it, he pulls on a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and removes a crowbar.
Returning to the coffin closest to the stairs, it apparently the newest one, he inserts an inch of the metal through the thinner ring of the hasp, ignoring the much thicker lock. Fingerprints and other evidence might be obtained from it. He leans into the bar, shoves hard, the ring breaks and the still sealed lock falls to the floor.
He looks up, receives McGee's confirming nod and lifts the lid.
He wishes he hadn't, for the sight that accompanies the waft of nauseating effluvium will fill their nightmares for years to come.
x
The woman's unclothed body is partially decomposed, flesh sloughed from muscle and bone. Her hair is wildly disheveled, her eyelids wide over shrunken orbs, her decayed face locked in a mask of horror, mouth wide in a silent scream. Her hands are still raised to the limit of the low coffin lid, fingers curled in claws, nails ripped from several fingers, flesh torn from bones. A scan of the lid shows shredded material, nail-marks gouged into the wood. She'd been far from scratching through the thick wood when she'd died.
"Boss?"
"I know, McGee." Gibbs expects the younger man to complain of nausea and horror. He'd rather not maintain his stoic front either.
"I think I know what he's doing."
x
The statement is just surprising enough. "What?" He restrains himself from moving the beam of light to the man beside him. There are details to record.
"When I was a kid I saw this vampire movie. I don't remember much about it but the villagers in Transylvania were afraid that, after being murdered, this girl might come back as a vampire. So they padlocked her coffin. She did come back, and one by one the locks fell off the rings whole. The locks were locked and the hasps unbroken, but one by one each fell off. Scared the life out of me.
"But I think that's what DeKalb is doing; looking for a vampire he made that can pass his test."
Chilled, Gibbs takes out his own phone and pushes a speed dial combination. "Duck, we found that bastard's hellhole," he gives the address and directions. "You're going to be until tomorrow transporting–" he's interrupted by a titanic crash from high above, accented by a gunshot.
xx
DiNozzo, though knowing it's hopeless, tries the light switch at the top of the stairs. Neither he nor Ziva say a word as they shine their beams down the silent hall, finding two doors on each side, the one to their immediate left open. Each knows the enemy lies in wait for them, alerted by the noise of their arrival. They cannot withdraw, cannot hope for more light; all windows are boarded up and restoring power is out of the question. They must search, in late-afternoon, through utter blackness for a murderous madman.
"We should have a SWAT team," DiNozzo says quietly as they stand outside a bedroom, their lights scanning it.
"We already have a large and deadly force."
"How do you figure that?" Four against one are not enough odds for him today, and in the dim backlight of their flashes he can just make out the woman beside him.
"Simple," she assures him, her shadowed face wreathed in a smile, "you are large, and I am deadly."
His light fixes on a particular point, "and I found something to help."
x
He's happy to see, on a night table next to the bed pressed against the left wall, a tall white candle. It's barely used, set upon a silver candlestick next to a box of matches.
Powerful as their flashes are, he will take the omni-directional glow of a good flame any day. Entering the nearly black room under Ziva's cover, he sets his flash upon its end on the table, the light lancing upward, then opens the box and lights the candle.
To their dark-accustomed eyes the glow fills the room with welcome light, allowing them to see everything. A large mirror rests upon a bureau across the room. Picking up the candle by its once silver stand, he brings it across the room and deposits it before the mirror, doubling the room's light.
The bedroom remains dimmer than he would like, but he knows he'll never have the 500 watts he'd prefer. They can see the room had been stripped of whatever could be used before the furniture had been abandoned as useless or unwanted. There's no place a vampire might hide, other than a door near the head of the stripped bed.
At his nod, Ziva steps in to cover the door as DiNozzo crosses to it, out of the line of fire. His own Sig ready in his right hand, he reaches for the knob.
The door explodes outward and a solid mass of black slams into him, knocking him off his feet. Ziva's gunshot is loud over his body slamming to the floor.
He's sure his eyes close for only an instant but when he can see again DeKalb has Ziva's body high over his head like a manic wrestler. He throws her to the floor; she slams down hard enough to splinter the floorboards and doesn't move.
Tony sits up and aims his gun but a kick batters it from his hand and two hands clutch his jacket. He's yanked off the floor like a rag doll, his six foot body borne across the room to slam with bone-jarring force into the wall.
Before he can move a hand clutches his throat!
Tony pries at the crushing grip, feeling his feet leave the floor. He stops prying and punches DeKalb, kicks him as hard as he can. He strains for breath, gagging for air. The grip changes, fingers and thumb crush his jaw, now no longer strangling him. He doubles his attack, seeing in the shadowed monster's glowing green eyes his deadly intent.
x
Ziva had managed to tuck her head forward as her body crashed to the floor, so she's able to shake off the daze and sits up. She searches for her gun in the dimness before she sees her partner's plight, pinned high to the wall by the murderous madman.
She's halfway off the floor when DeKalb twists his hand and a sharp snap cuts the air. Ziva's furious cry reverberates through the room as Tony's arms fall limply to his sides. His head lolls forward and his still body hangs lifeless against the wall.