Skin Trade

53

THE BODY LAY in a broken heap in an alley behind the club she worked at, as if when they dumped the body they’d brought her home. The last body dump in St. Louis had been just outside the club where the dancer worked, too. But that one had been clean compared to this, just vampire bites. Death by exsanguination. This woman hadn’t had time to bleed to death.

I realized that this one, like most of the body dumps in St. Louis, was in a place where shadows would hide some of the damage. Almost as if even the killer couldn’t face what he’d done in bright light.

The woman’s neck was at an angle so sharp that I could see spine poking against the skin of the neck, not quite through the skin, but close. The neck was ugly and wrong, but that was nothing compared to what he, or they, had done to the rest of the… body.

There were burns on half her face, and going down one side of the body. The skin was red and angry and blackened and peeling, and the other half of her body was perfect. Pale and young and beautiful, paired with the blackened ruin of the other half of her.

Bernardo took a sharp breath in and walked a little way down the alley. I forced myself to stay squatted by the body, and tried not to smell anything. The alley didn’t smell that good to begin with, but usually burned flesh overpowers everything else. This didn’t. The burns weren’t that fresh, or they would’ve smelled more.

I swallowed hard and stood up, letting myself look at the people around me instead of the body. I had to keep thinking of it, really hard, as the body, because to humanize it at all would be too much. It wouldn’t help me solve this crime to think about what this woman had gone through. Honest, it wouldn’t.

Shaw stood there, staring down at the body, with a look on his face that I could only describe as lost. Morgan had rejoined us, telling us that he had the subpoenas in the works. He now seemed to think it was his idea, and was back to not being all that friendly with me. I was actually relieved. Whatever I’d done to him seemed to be short acting. Detective Thurgood had joined us in her ill-fitting skirt suit, sensible high heels, and bad attitude. But no one’s attitude was particularly rosy, so it was okay.

I asked them, “Have the other bodies looked like this?”

“Not like this,” Shaw said.

“No,” Morgan said.

Thurgood just shook her head, lips in a line so thin that her mouth was almost invisble in her face. From the lips and the lack of talking, I was betting she was fighting off nausea.

“Were the other bodies burned?” I asked.

“The last two, but not nearly this bad,” Shaw said.

“Are you even sure it’s the same guy from St. Louis? He never did anything like this in your city,” Morgan said.

“How do you know what he did in my city?” I asked.

“We talked to Lieutenant Storr, and he filled us in,” Shaw said.

I didn’t want to tell them that Dolph had not told me about the inquiry from Vegas. I didn’t want to admit that someone who I was supposed to be working with had cut me out of the loop completely. So I pretended like this wasn’t news and went back to trying to pretend that half the cops I worked with weren’t treating me like a perp.

“Vittorio and his people didn’t burn any of the bodies, but yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s him.”

“How can you be sure, if this wasn’t his MO in St. Louis or any of the other towns?” Morgan asked.

Edward had moved up beside me, not too close, but close enough to let me know that he had understood that Dolph hadn’t told me. That he understood how much that might bother me.

“Because this is what the Church used to do to vampires they could capture alive. They used holy water, which burns like acid. It was supposed to burn the devil out of them. But the only two I know of personally that were treated like this were both beautiful, very beautiful. It’s a lot about the dark side of the Church; they say they did it to save the soul, but they usually pick victims that satisfy some need in them.”

“Are you saying the Church was like a serial?” Thurgood finally spoke in a voice that was a little choked but still nicely angry.

“I guess; I just find it interesting that the only two men I know who were treated like this were very fair of face and body, and they were burned like this. I’ve never heard of a vamp that started life as plain that they did this to. I’d be interested to know if it was the same priest, or group of priests.”

Thurgood again. “Are you saying that beautiful men were some priest’s victim profile?”

“I guess two isn’t a pattern, maybe a coincidence, but if I find a third, than yeah, that’s what I’d be saying.”

“That’s a monstrous lie,” she said.

“Hey, I’m Christian, too, but there are bad guys in every profession.”

“What does it matter what some priest that has been dead for hundreds of years did or didn’t do?” Bernardo said. He’d walked back to join us at the body. “We can’t catch him; he’s already dead. We need to catch Vittorio.”

“The marshal’s right,” Shaw said. For a minute it was a little unclear which marshal he meant; then he said, “We need to catch the live ones.”

“Are you saying that this vampire is trying to duplicate his own injuries?” Morgan asked. It was almost like he was ignoring them both.

“Looks like,” I said.

“The others died of blood loss; there was no broken neck,” Shaw said.

“Maybe they took pity on her,” Bernardo said.

We all looked at him.

He nodded toward the body. “Maybe one of Vittorio’s people put her out of her misery.”

“Or maybe they got tired of her screaming,” Olaf said.

We looked at him then; I think anything was better than looking at the body. Olaf was still staring at the body. If it bothered him, it didn’t show.

“Or maybe she passed out from the pain, and it wasn’t fun anymore,” Shaw said.

“You don’t pass out from this,” Bernardo said. “You don’t sleep. You don’t rest. You don’t do anything but hurt unless they can get enough drugs in you, and even then, sometimes the pain overrides it.”

“You talk like you know,” Shaw said.

“I had a friend that got burned bad.” He looked away so that he wasn’t looking at any of us. Whatever experession was on his face, he wanted to keep it to himself.

“What happened?” Shaw asked.

“He died.” Then Bernardo walked away from us. This time he walked farther, pushing his way through the crowd, until he found a piece of alley to lean against. It put him closer to the reporters, who started shouting out questions when they saw his badge and the gloves on his hands. He ignored them all, just closing his eyes and leaning back. Whatever he was seeing, or trying not to see, cut out anything they could shout at him.

“Is he right,” I asked Olaf, “you never stop screaming or pass out?”

“I do not know,” Olaf said. “I do not like fire.”

I realized that though it didn’t seem to bother him to look at the body, he wasn’t enjoying it the way he had the bodies in the morgue. He liked blades and blood, but not fire. Good to know, I guess.

I turned to Shaw. “We need to see the other photos, the other victims. Especially the last two.”

He looked at me, frowning. I was getting a lot of that in Vegas. “There’s nothing in the reports from St. Louis that you guys actually saw Vittorio. How do you know he’s burned?”

I fought to keep my face even, empty, not to widen even my eyes, because I had forgotten. I knew Vittorio’s fate from a letter from his lady love, who had left him after St. Louis, afraid for her life and her new lover’s life. She hadn’t been able to deal with his madness anymore. She’d even helped us in St. Louis, putting the bodies where’d we’d find them sooner, trying to leave clues. The letter had come to Jean-Claude, as Master of the City. It had never occurred to me to share it with the cops.