Tuesday: 4:40 a.m.
It took only twenty minutes to reach the crime scene. A forensics tech was hard on the job methodically photographing the body. Buffy crouched down to take a closer look at the victim and at her second crime scene of the night. She carefully walked the scene; her shields lowered, seeing if she could sense the killer. She sighed, but she came up blank.
I am tired of looking at dead bodies, she thought. I'm over five hundred years old; that's a long time to be looking at dead bodies. With all of the passing years, I thought it would have gotten better. It didn't. Right now, dead is dead. And after viewing so many bodies, I can still smell the bitter metallic smell of blood. It lives in my nostrils, and not even the sweet smell of perfume can take away the stench.
"Anything?" Victor asked quietly behind her. His mind was awhirl since he had received the call from Connor an hour ago. He didn't know if he could take this job anymore. After working with Buffy all of these years, he noticed her lack of enthusiasm for the job now, and he didn't want that to happen to him. But days like today and the recent weeks affirmed that maybe these deaths were getting to him too.
Startled, Buffy turned around. So deep in reverie, she hadn't noticed him beside her. At five o'clock in the morning, Victor looked like he had stepped out of the pages of G.Q. "How can you look like that?" she muttered, finding something to release the sourness inside her.
"What?" he said looking at his outfit. He was wearing a blue dress shirt with a pointed collar tucked into khaki chinos. "Don't you like?" he asked, grinning briefly. His heart grew light. He loves this Buffy Summers. He knew how much each death was weighing on her soul. "What I am wondering is how can you look like that?" he said looking at her clothing.
Looking at her own outfit of comfortable jeans and a t-shirt, she retorted, "I just woke up."
"That's no excuse," he countered.
"I didn't have time for my morning cup of coffee," she said with an adorable pout.
Victor eyes widened in mock alarm. "Oh my God!" he exclaimed. "Hey!" he yelled. "Someone quick. Summers didn't get her morning coffee yet."
There was a shocked silence for a full minute. Then there was a mad dash as everyone scrambled to be the first to retrieve coffee for Buffy.
Fifteen minutes later, she was sipping on her first taste of an aromatic brew of the morning. She sighed ecstatically.
"Are you happy now?" Victor asked, waiting patiently for Buffy to drink her coffee.
"Oh yes," she said with a moan.
Victor surveyed the crime scene, noting that most of the people hanging around had left. "I saw you 'looking' at the body earlier," he said quietly. Only a few people knew that Buffy was a telepath. Not even Connor knew. "What did you sense?"
Buffy paused, the Styrofoam cup halfway to her lips. She looked bleakly at the white sheet covering the nude and mutilated girl's body. They were waiting for the Medical Examiner, Dudley, to pronounce her dead; although everyone could see that she was already dead. But it was procedure. The girl's face was unrecognizable. The only thing they could tell was she was a natural blond. "What I always sense since we have began viewing these bodies?" Buffy said, in a troubled voice. "What I sense," she said again, "is evil, pure evil."
Victor shuddered as his heart jumped in his chest. He never thought he would be afraid. He had dealt with deaths that were a lot more gruesome as a cop and more since he became a werewolf. But one thing he had truly no idea how to combat was evil.
Buffy brought the cup to her lips and took another sip. Buffy noticed his nervousness. "Don't worry, whatever was here is long gone." 'I think.'
Victor nodded in relief. It was not as if he were a coward.
Buffy knew what he was thinking. She didn't have to read his mind. "I understand. No one could come up against true evil and not be afraid."
"Do you think it was the same person?"
"I believe one person is orchestrating the killings, but this body had more bites, indicating that more than one vampire fed from her."
Standing in the trees, obscured by the dawning light, blue eyes alit with a hint of madness watched Buffy Summers and Victor Martens as they carried out their grisly search. "Broken doll lying there. Blood rich and sweet," the voice whispered.
Tuesday: 6: oo a.m.
At the A.D.A.P. headquarters, Buffy was on her third cup of coffee of the morning as she looked over her notes and photographs from the crime scene. She, Jocelyn, and Dudley were waiting in Connor's office for the big man to arrive.
"Everyone," he said carrying his own coffee to his desk. "Summers," Connor acknowledged, as he settled in a chair behind his desk. He shifted for a few minutes, settling. He then focused his full attention towards her. "Does it look like the Dean case could be connected to this one?" he asked abruptly, looking at his own photographs of the crime scene.
She shrugged and said with a slight hesitation. "It's too early to tell." But in her gut, Buffy knew that both crimes were connected, she could feel it.
"Summers, we can't have anymore killings. The media is already having a field day with this. No matter how careful we were, some of the facts leaked, and they are calling these killings vampire murders. If this continues, we'll have panic on our hands. And you know we can't have the world knowing that vampires exist."
"I know," said Buffy softly.
"It just takes one person to say something, and all we have being working towards the last three years is gone. But one thing I learned from working in law enforcement all these years: Reporters are bloodhounds. If they smell a cover up, they attack like dogs after bones. And the President is not happy. He called me earlier and chewed my butt off. If you think I have any butt, think again. See," he said getting out of his chair and turning around to show Buffy his ever-decreasing posterior. "I have only half of a butt."
A flash of humor crossed Buffy face. "If you say so." At times like this, she remembered why she liked him. "I know what you mean, the President called me this morning too. I had to check my ear to make sure it was still attached, he was that angry."
Connor frowned slightly, "I don't want to have anymore such phone calls from him. But he's right. If he's in another state and knows what's going on, then we have to keep closer rein than what we have been doing. It is essential that we wrap this up quickly," he said, standing up as a dismissal.
Buffy nodded, gathered up her papers, and strode towards the door.
"Agent Summers," Connor called. "Do you think both crimes were committed by the same perpetrator?"
She paused and turned towards him. What should she tell him? Her gut said yes, but there was no evidence to support it. She took a quick look at the crime scene photographs. A thought flickered in her head. After viewing both crime scenes, something had bothered her, and she couldn't put her finger on it until now. "Why did you call me about this new case?" she asked.
"What do you mean?" Connor questioned suspiciously.
Buffy eyed him thoughtfully. "I have been to both crime scenes, and each death was different. The previous ones were similar to the Dean case that was why A.D.A.P. was called. But this new one was different. This body was female and she was mutilated. There wasn't anything obvious about the new crime scene that screamed that this was a vampire murder. Because of the obvious wounds, no one would have noticed the bite marks. So why were we called on this?"
A tense silence enveloped the room, and Connor traded looks with Jocelyn and Dudley.
Buffy noticed the conspirator looks. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully. This was one of those times she wished her telepathy worked. She lowered her mental shield but was unable to read them.
"I sensed it," said Jocelyn, speaking eagerly. "Working at A.D.A.P., my power appears to be growing. For the last couple of weeks, I have been experiencing random visions. At first I thought I was going crazy, but now I know. I think I'm clairvoyant."
"Clairvoyant?" Buffy questioned skeptically. She regarded them curiously. She began to wonder if they thought she was a fool. For awhile now, she had been noticing odd little things, i.e., how they watched each other to make sure whatever they were saying was correct. It was time to bring out the big guns."Is that so?" she said, speaking in as reasonable a tone as she could manage.
"Yes," said Jocelyn, relieved that Buffy believed her. "For the last couple of days, I have been sensing future events, but I wasn't sure until that couple found the body, and I sensed it was important to the Dean case. I was right, wasn't I?" she said, her voice holding a hint of challenge.
"Yes, you were right," Buffy said giving her a measuring glance. "I think the same person orchestrated both murders, and we'll find out more later at the autopsy."
Tuesday 6: 20 a.m."That was good," said Connor, letting out a long, audible breath. He stared at the empty doorway that Buffy had just walked through.
"Thank you," said Jocelyn looking surprise she had came up with such a believable lie. "I am a genius," she continued.
"Yes, a genius," Connor acknowledged. His gaze touched upon each member of the team and asked what each one was thinking, "How did we know the victim had vampire marks on her?"
They looked blankly at each other.
Tuesday 7:00 a.m.
Forty minutes later found Buffy entering the morgue. She and Victor had decided to separate, she to the morgue and he in the field following a couple of leads in the Dean case. Buffy thought she had gotten the short end of the stick. Whose idea was it anyway for her to go the morgue, she thought as she walked through the doors. She wrinkled her nose against the antiseptic smell. She would never get used to the smell of chilled flesh; no matter how many D.B. she had to view. "What's the bottom line," she asked Dudley, whose hands were in a body laid out on a table. Dudley was a rotund man, with receding brown hair, a florid face, and a bulbous nose.
He surveyed his handiwork a moment before responding. "Toxicology came back with a most curious thing," he murmured.
"What?" Buffy said, looking away from the almost gleeful look on Dudley's face. Most of her life, she had been dealing with dead bodies, but to see one thrust out on a table, with someone in their inners, that was sick.
"Curare," said Dudley, a half smile on his face.
"Curare?" Buffy said startled. "Did you just say curare," she asked.
"Uh huh," Dudley murmured with a nod.
"Does that still exist?" she asked as she wandered around the room.
"Apparently so," said Dudley, his expression still serious. He wiped his hands and walked towards a desk in the corner retrieving a manila folder. He put his half-glasses on his nose and peered at his notes. "Curare is a most curious thing," he said. "It used many elements, which caused it to be a deadly poison, including the bark of Strychnos toxifera or Strychnos guianensis (Family Loganiaceae) and of the Menispermaceae, especially Chondrodendron tomentosum or Sciadotenia toxifera. Other plant additives helped to prepare it into an arrow poison. It may not be as popular as designer drugs they use these days, but it still exists."
"Uh, what does it do?" she asked curiously.
"It's a powerful relaxant, especially for striated muscles. It works best by blocking the cholinergic transmission at the myoneural junction. It's a toxic alkaloid found only in certain tropical South American trees."
"Myo, what?" Buffy said with a frown.
"Myoneural junction," Dudley said looking up. "There is another word for it, and it's neuromuscular junction. It's the seam between a nerve fiber and a muscle."
"Okay," Buffy said. "Let me get this right," she said thoughtfully. "Someone used a rare drug on her that's only found in South America."
"Yeah, they did," he said. "So this is what you need to do – route out all of the South American vampires."
Buffy gave him an icy stare.
Dudley gave Buffy a sheepish smile. "There's another thing: she was alive when they carved her up," he said suddenly serious. "Because of the nature of curare, she was very much awake and aware of what was happening until the pain got so severe that she lost consciousness. Curare is quick acting, so she couldn't do anything including calling out or making any gesture. Because of that, there are no defensive wounds; this little girl was tortured to death."
Buffy closed her eyes in pain. "What did she die from?" she whispered, her voice shaky. "The curare poisoning or the wounds?"
Dudley peered at Buffy over his narrowed glasses. "Death from curare is caused by asphyxia, because the skeletal muscles become relaxed and then paralyzed. So I guess the lack of breath killed her long before the loss of blood from the wounds could."
"Oh my God," Buffy said, her eyes transfixed with shock and grief. "The pain and agony she must have gone through." Since she first heard of this death, she felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. "Did you measure the bites?" she asked, clearing her throat.
"Yes," Dudley said picking up another folder from the desk and opening it – this one green. "It took me a while, but I measured and counted each bite personally. She had about forty bite wounds - at least that was what I could find. But using what I gathered from the size and positions, I determined that it came from six different incisors."
"That means at least six different vampires fed from her," Buffy said flatly.
"Yes," he said nodding. "There's barely any blood left in the body. I sent her fingerprints thru AFIS, thinking we might be able to identify our Joan Doe, and got lucky."
"Joan Doe?" she questioned bemusedly.
"Yes, we already have a Jane. A hit and run accident," he said motioning towards a closed drawer.
Okay, Buffy thought to herself. Did she really want to know about the girl? To know the name of the victim in Buffy's mind is to care, and when you started to care, you lost your objectivity. But from the first, something about this victim had been calling to her. She hesitated briefly, then she had to ask, "Who was she?"
"She's a Ms. Catherine Dunmore, the local PD sent the information over," said Dudley, handing Buffy the folder. "Her boyfriend had reported her missing. It seems they had a fight and she stormed out of their apartment. He didn't think anything when she didn't come home the night of their fight. But when she didn't return the next day or the next, he went to the police after searching for her. Of course, the police thought she went away to cool down, so that is what they told him. They also stated that if she didn't return by the next day, then he of course could file the missing person's report."
"Mmm," Buffy murmured. "That's not saying anything good about our boys in blue. How then were the police able to identify her so fast?"
"Ms. Dunmore was in the military," he said. "When the boyfriend stressed that she wouldn't have taken off like that even to spite him, they contacted the military base."
"Let me guess, she wasn't there," Buffy said sarcastically.
"How did you know?"
"You don't have to be a mind reader to see where this was heading," she retorted.
"After not finding her, they came down hard on the boyfriend to cover their own incompetence," Dudley sneered. "Well, the police didn't find any foul play in the boyfriend's apartment. It seemed as if she had disappeared into thin air."
"Until we found her," Buffy said with deceptive calm. 'Idiots,' she thought.
"Yes, you got that in one. Here's a picture of her," he said, handing Buffy a photograph. He gazed at the picture over Buffy shoulders. She was a beautiful woman, but what was left of her wasn't enough to notice. "Hey!" Dudley said looking startled. "I never noticed before that she looked a little bit like you," he said staring speculatively at Buffy and the photo.
Buffy stared woodenly at the photo.
"She was twenty-two years old and had been missing for two weeks."
"I can read!" she snapped gazing at the photograph with haunted eyes.
"Excuse me?" he said taken aback.
"I said," Buffy said through clenched teeth, "I can read."
Several minutes later, Buffy was still staring at the photograph.