Two weeks went by, during which no sign was found of Alexandra Clarke. Some of the other missing persons did turn up though: dead. The cause of death was massive damage to their throats. The news media started to call the killer "the Slasher." We withheld certain details of the murders from the press. This was standard procedure. We could identify genuine witnesses and suspects if they knew of the withheld details. The most important detail we had withheld was also the most puzzling: all of the victims had been drained of blood. I was beginning to think that my drug theory might not be correct. We might be dealing with some sort of bizarre cult.
I arrived in the squad room on the morning of May 15. Bill was already there. He was reading a book on vampires. "Why are you reading that trash?" I asked him.
Bill looked up from the book. "It's not trash, Joe," he told me. "This book is full of valuable pieces of information."
"Such as?" I asked.
"Such as this." He pushed the book into my hands, and pointed to the chapter title.
I read it. "'Ten Ways to Protect Yourself From Vampires.'" I looked up at him. "You're afraid of vampires now, Bill?"
"Oh, sure, you may scoff," said Bill, "But legends of vampires exist in nearly all cultures, and everyone knows that legends are based on facts."
I shook my head. I had heard that 'legends are based on facts' line too many times. Legends were just legends. Scary stories told around the campfire, late at night. "If you say so, Bill."
"I don't expect to find real vampires."
"No, of course not," I said.
"I think we could be dealing with some sort of vampire cult. Some sick kids who take Anne Rice seriously, something like that."
"That's possible."
"I thought it would be a good idea to learn a little something about them."
I had to admit that Bill might have a point. It did look like we were looking for some serious wackos. The book might give us some insights into how they thought. I had more faith in old fashioned police work though.
We spent the morning reviewing our interview notes, looking for any details that we might have missed before. Our efforts didn't pay off. That's the way it often was. Most of police work was endless routine, sifting through the mountains of evidence, looking for one or two jewels of real information. It was almost noon when the word came in. A body matching Alexandra Clarke's description had been found in a patch of woods, not far from her school.
We arrived on the scene as the forensics people were just finishing up. Some of them were looking a little green. They body appeared to have lain out in the open for the full two weeks, and it was badly decomposed. I asked the lead forensic investigator at the scene how sure he was of his identification.
"Pretty sure," he said.
"What makes you sure?" I asked.
"The clothes match the description we had," said the investigator. "That yellow leather jacket is pretty distinctive."
"Anything else?"
"This was in her pocket." He handed me a Hemery High Student ID card, in a plastic evidence bag. It was Alexandra Clarke's. "Of course, it could be some other girl, who borrowed the jacket, or something like that. We'll have confirm it back at the lab. DNA, compare her dental records, the usual."
"How about asking her mother to make a visual identification?"
He shook his head. "No. She's too badly decomposed for that, and I wouldn't want to subject her family to that sort of thing. She is definately going to have a closed casket funeral."
"Could it be the Slasher?"
He shrugged. "Some animals have been at her. The body is pretty messed up. We'll have to wait for the autopsy to be sure. There doesn't seem to be much blood though. It could be that she was killed and bled out somewhere else though, and the body was just dumped here."
Bill and I examined the scene for ourselves, but we didn't really expect to find anything. The last two weeks had had several storms; the rain would have washed away much of the evidence. We gave permission for the medical examiner to take the body away.
We proceeded on the assumption that it was Alexandra Clarke's body, until the lab could tell us otherwise. It was time to talk with everyone who had seen Alexandra that last day again, see if they still maintained the same stories.
We arrived in the office of Murray Gary, Chief Administrator of Hemery High School, at three o'clock. We questioned him about Alexandra Clarke, and her friends.
"So, Miss Clarke was a good student?" I asked.
"An excellent student," said Mr. Gary.
"Ever skip any classes?"
"No. Good attendance record: only missed three days last year, when she had her appendix out."
"Good grades?"
"Top of most of her classes."
"There hasn't been any drop off in her grades or attendance recently?"
"No, sir," said Mr. Gary. "Both are still top rate, until, you know, a couple of weeks ago."
"How about her friends?" I asked.
"What about them?" asked Mr. Gary.
"Any of her friends have attendance, or grade problems?"
Mr. Gary looked uncomfortable. "There is one girl…I don't know if it's really important."
"Let us be the judge of that."
"Muffy Winters," said Mr. Gary.
Bill and I exchanged a look, and I saw him write the name in his notebook, and underline it. This was the second time Miss Winters name had come up. "What about Miss Winters?" I asked.
"I don't know it if means anything, but her attendance has been off lately, and her grades…well, her grades have never been anything to write home about, other than—you know—her report cards. We do write them, and send them to the students' homes."
"Of course," I said, "but what has happened with her grades recently?"
"They've gotten even lower."
"And her attendance?"
"She's already been late three times this week, and it's only Wednesday."
"Have there been any other problems?"
"Just this morning she assaulted one of the members of the basketball team. Just grabbed him and threw him down onto the floor. Half a dozen witnesses say she did it for no reason."
"What did she say?" I asked.
"She claimed that he grabbed her a— uh derrier, but I don't think that could be true. All of our athletes have taken gender sensitivity courses, and know that such behaviour is not allowed."
I nodded understanding. Even without the new-age pansy courses, high school athletics where where young men learned the fundamentals of fair play, and moral behaviour. "So, do you think that Miss Winters has a drug problem?"
"I don't like to think such things about any of my students," said Mr. Gary, "but I think she might. She denied it, of course, when I asked her about it, but denial is one of the signs."
"Could we look in her locker?" I asked.
"Yes, of course," said Mr. Gary. "Just let me look up her locker combination."
Mr. Gary took us to Miss Winters' locker. It contained the usual items. School books, a cheerleading uniform. I sniffed it to see if it had been cleaned recently. It had.
There was a gym bag in the bottom of the locker. I pulled it out, and opened it. It contained a strange assortment of items. The first thing I pulled out was a large wooden cross. "Is Miss Winters very religious?" I asked.
"Not that I've noticed," said Mr. Gary. "We aren't allowed to ask about things like that though."
I nodded. We were getting a lot of that woolly headed thinking in the department lately too. That's the sort of thing that happened when the hippies grew up, and started running the country.
The gym bag also contained some wooden stakes, and plastic bottles full of a clear, colourless, liquid. I opened one, and sniffed it. It was odourless too. Something else for the lab boys to look at. I'd heard of people putting LSD into water, or it may have been some other drug.
I asked Mr. Gary if he knew where Miss Winters might be right now, and he said that she was supposed to be at a cheerleader practice, but with her uniform here in her locker, it seemed that that wasn't likely. He took us to the gymnasium anyway, where we observed the school's cheerleaders practicing their routines for several minutes before we interrupted them to ask if they knew Miss Winters' whereabouts. They told us that Muffy had missed several practices over the last couple of weeks, and none of them had any idea where she might be. Diamond—the girl who the yellow leather jacket belonged to—told us that she thought that Muffy had a new boyfriend that she was spending time with.
"Do you know his name?" I asked her.
"Trout, or Perch, or something like that," said Diamond. "Some sort of fish, anyway."
"Is he a student here?" I asked.
"No!" said Diamond. "He's some sort of scuzz. A total sleaze!"
"Do you know where we might find him?" I asked.
"Negatory! You think I'd know someone like that!"
"I think I saw him at the garage on Seventh Street," said another girl. Diamond gave her an astonished look. "Hey! I was there getting gas for Daddy's BMW! He said that if I brought it home empty one more time, he'd take my keys away!"
I looked at Bill, and he nodded. He had gotten all that down in his notebook. We turned to leave.
"Oh, Sergeant Friday?" asked Diamond.
I turned back to her. "Yes?"
"Is there any chance I could get my jacket back?"
It was 4:56 PM when we arrived at the Winters home. I rang the doorbell. It was answered by a young girl, brunette caucasian, maybe nine or ten years old. I showed her my badge. "May I speak with your parents, please?"
"Who is it, Dusk?" called a woman from somewhere in the house.
"A couple of cops!" called the little girl.
"Oh!" An attractive blonde woman appeared in the hall. "Is this about those parking tickets, because I told the officer—"
"It's not about parking tickets ma'am," I told her. "I'm Sergeant Friday. This is my partner, Officer Gannon. We're investigating the death of Alexandra Clarke. May we come in?"
"Oh, of course!" She looked at the young girl. "Dusk, why don't you go watch TV in your room?"
Mrs. Winters directed us into her living room. "How can I help you? I've only met Alexandra a couple of times, when she came over to help Muffy with her homework."
"Actually, it's Muffy we want to talk to," I told her. "Is she here?"
"No, she's not home."
"Do you know where we could find her?"
"I think she has cheerleader practice now."
"We've just come from the school," I said. "She wasn't there."
"Oh, well, maybe she's with her boyfriend, Bobby."
"Bobby?" I asked. "Don't you mean, um…" I looked at Bill.
Bill flipped back a couple of pages in his notebook. "Trout, or Perch, or some sort of fish."
"No," said Mrs. Winters. "I'm pretty sure that her boyfriend is Bobby. I think he's on the basketball team."
I looked at Bill, and nodded. The parents were always the last to know. Muffy had taken up with some new guy, from the wrong side of the tracks, and she hadn't told them about him yet.
I stood up. "Well, thank you, Mrs. Winters." I took a card from my pocket, and handed it to her. "If you could call us, when your daughter comes home, We'd appreciate it."
Our next stop was the Seventh Street garage. The owner told us that he used to have a young man working for him, named Bass. He had also rented a room over the garage to him, but he had quit his job, and moved out a week ago. He hadn't left a forwarding address.
We had reached the end of our watch, and it seemed that we had only turned up more dead ends. Bill and I called it a night.