11. Scene of the Crime
Chapter 11
Scene of the Crime
Sierra Escondida Police Department—Thirty minutes later
T ig left Petar’s cauldron in the conference room under Liza’s watchful eye with orders to fingerprint and take photos of everyone. That should keep them busy and out of trouble for a while.
Tig took a quick look at his information in her confidential informant file. Reading between the lines, she decided Jayden was correct—the four vampires were Petar’s children, especially because they all shared in the inheritance.
It took some rearranging on Tig’s part, but after a few phone calls, Gaea agreed to babysit the cauldron and Janey. Carolyn and Vishon, two of the council members who weren’t reservists, agreed to escort the cauldron to Gaea’s and sit with them while Tig’s team went to the hotel to take possession of the body and investigate the crime scene. She didn’t have enough sworn officers to leave one supervising the cauldron.
What would they find at the hotel? A crime scene or a trap? Walking into the unknown made her nervous, which was why she wanted as many of her seasoned team with her as she could get. With Rolf and Henry on vacation, she only had two vampires—Liza and Zeke—for backup.
“Thanks, Gaea,” Tig said into the phone. “And be careful. Until we clear their alibis, Brucie and associates are my chief suspects.”
“Never fear, my dear. I’m armed and prepared to deal with any nefarious behavior.”
Tig chuckled. “Maybe we should hire you as a reserve officer.”
“I’m too much of an anarchist to ever volunteer.”
She coughed, choking on her reply. If anyone belonged in the “lawful good” category, it was Gaea. “Let’s discuss the idea another time. For now, I’ll give Brucie directions to your house.”
“But not all night. I have plans—”
“Yes, I promise. Once Liza returns, the vampires and Janey will head to her home.”
Before they left for the hotel, Jayden came into Tig’s office with the bagged note, staring at it. “It seems stupid for the killer to use their own handwriting.”
Tig took the plastic bag from him. “This is Spencerian cursive writing. It had to be written by a vampire who was at least a hundred years but no older than a hundred and seventy-five. Almost every vampire born in the 1700s or early 1800s learned Copperplate. By the mid-1800s, schools shifted to Spencerian.” She took a notebook off the bookshelf behind her and opened it to a bookmarked place. “See the curlicues in this Spencerian sample? The way the writing flows together? That generation of vampires all write this way. Very distinctive. Schools stopped teaching it around 1925.”
“But couldn’t the killer have faked it?”
“That’s harder to do with cursive, and usually some tells would slip through unless the writer had an artistic bent. No, whoever wrote this went to school between 1850 and 1925.” She handed the note back to him. “If you’d please lock that in the evidence room, we should go. I want you along. Bring your full forensics kit and a body bag.”
Tig collected the card key to Petar’s room, number seven-eleven, from Brucie. By then, the two council members showed up. Introductions were made, and the cauldron left for Gaea’s house with their escort.
Twenty minutes later, Tig and her team arrived at the hotel. With everyone wearing civilian clothes, she briefed her officers to enter the lobby and take the elevator to the seventh floor, acting like they were guests who belonged there. Liza and Jayden each rolled an oversized suitcase, one to hide Jayden’s forensics kit, and the other designed to carry a surfboard and long enough to carry a body.
When the elevator doors slid open, Tig peered out. The hallway was empty. She gestured for Zeke to watch their backs and led the way with Liza and Jayden in the middle, walking in a diamond pattern. As much as she wanted to dust for prints on the outside doorknob, the odds were, when Brucie opened the door, he’d smeared any the killer left behind, and she didn’t want to linger in the hallway. If hotel security noticed anything smacking of police activity, they might call Mordida PD to confirm. Mordida wasn’t in her jurisdiction, and she didn’t want Mordida’s PD messing with the body. She had no easy way to explain desiccated vampire remains.
She swiped the key card over the electronic sensor. The door didn’t appear tampered with. No jimmying, no scratches, clean as a whistle. Too clean.
Her team followed her inside, and they let the door close behind them. First order of business—make sure no one lay in wait. With her SIG Sauer drawn, Tig gestured for everyone to drop their crime scene bags, then sent Liza to search the bathroom, Zeke to go through the closet, and motioned for Jayden to watch her six. She crept into the main room and squatted by the bed to check under the mattress, then rose to look behind the large armoire that supported a television.
Empty. The room was empty, except for the bed.
A shirtless vampire corpse reclined on the sheets. The blankets had been pulled off and tossed on the floor. From the appearance of his mummified body, Petar was over five hundred years old. Someone had pounded a stake through his heart, which was still embedded in his chest.
A silver stake. Fuck.
Tig leaned in closer to inspect the stake—just like the ones delivered to Henry and Evelina, right down to the leather yoke, including the strange markings carved into the leather.
“Clear,” Liza barked.
“Closet’s clear,” Zeke echoed.
“Okay,” Tig said. “Find anything of note?”
“Nothing. It’s spotless.” Liza strode out of the bathroom. “Not even a ring around the bathtub.”
Zeke followed. “The closet’s full of clothes, so he hadn’t packed yet.”
Liza stopped by Tig and froze, eyeing the bed. “Crap on a cracker. The killer tortured him.”
Tig nodded. “Looks like it.” Signs of burn marks were visible on the wrists and ankles and his ribcage. “How do you want to approach bagging him?”
Jayden raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you want me to test the wounds on his chest for silver?”
“Yes, when we get back to the station… I don’t want to waste time here.” For now, she assumed the killer had tied Petar to the bed with silver chains and poked him with the stake multiple times, accounting for the marks—but they’d confirm later. “The sooner we get everything collected and taken to the van, the better. For now, we’ll assume Liza’s observation is correct.”
Jayden moved in closer. “How do we even know this body is Petar’s?”
“We won’t, for sure. But it’s a good assumption for now. See that?” She extended a telescoping pointer to lift an object still attached to a mummified finger. “That’s Petar’s pinkie ring. Each time I met him, he was wearing it. Very distinctive design. Custom job, and expensive, with his initials and all those diamonds and rubies.”
“Do you think we’ll find a layer of skin inside the band?”
“Look for it later.” In theory, the gold would preserve the tissue.
From the corner of the room, a metallic bang sounded, and Tig pivoted on her heels. What she’d believed was a covered box housing magic equipment suddenly shook and rattled, another banging sound coming from within.
Zeke, being the nearest, pinched the blanket-like cover and pulled it off, pointing his gun at what was underneath.
A rabbit.
The rabbit from the magic act had gripped an empty plastic bowl between its jaws, the oversized incisors biting into the edge, and was banging the dish against the wire cage.
“Zeke, please take care of the rabbit.” Everyone was already gloved, so that wasn’t an issue, and Zeke worked with all kinds of animals. “Search for its food. Let me know if you see anything that seems suspicious.”
Zeke unlatched the cage. “Poor little critter.” He pulled out the water bottle and then wrestled with the bunny for its bowl. “Give me that. How am I supposed to feed ya if I can’t have your dish?”
Liza opened the refrigerator. “I got Zeke’s solution right here.” She took out a bag of vegetables. When she pushed a carrot stick through the cage’s square wires, the rabbit released the bowl, grabbing and tugging the carrot out of her hand. “What’s gonna happen to the li’l furball?”
Tig tsked . “We’ll figure that out later. We’re going to pack everything and take it all with us, including the rabbit.”
Jayden moved over to the corpse. “How do you want to approach processing the scene? We only have one chance at this.”
Tig eased over to the other side of the bed. The longer they were there, the more risk they’d be caught. “I suggest we photograph the scene—everything in place. Then roll the body in the bottom sheet and take the evidence with us. After we load the van, we search the room, floor to ceiling.”
Each of her crew signaled their agreement.
“Okay, that’s our plan.” Tig turned to Liza. “You set out the number markers and start taking photos. The camera is in Jayden’s kit. Zeke, once you’re done petting the rabbit”—he’d filled its dish with alfalfa hay and was stroking its back as it ate—“follow Liza and search after she’s photographed an area. Look between mattresses, behind and under drawers, in the heater vent.” She sighed, her stomach tightening. How would they get it all done before dawn? “Whatever you do, be thorough. The killer was hunting for something and wanted it badly enough to torture Petar. If they didn’t find it, we need to.”