Doug Allyn - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 6. Whole No. 766, June 2005

“Anything?” I asked.

“They’re not talking,” Wally said. “When I mentioned the vampire, they all shut up. They’re scared of him.”

“They admit he’s been down here?”

“They don’t say yes or no. You know kids. They don’t want to give anything away.”

“The vampire is still sleeping,” I said.

Wally glanced at the late afternoon sky.

“Of course he is,” he said.

“Do what we said then,” I said. “Tell them someone sold Ricky Adelar some dirty Ecstasy and that Ricky’s brain may be scrambled. Tell them that Ricky said it was the vampire, but that we’re still investigating. Tell them to be smart. If they want to turn anything in to us, no questions asked, we’d appreciate it. Tell them Ricky’s parents are completely devastated.”

“Okay,” Wally said.

“And try to sound like Jimmy Stewart when you do it,” I said.

“Okay,” Wally said.

He climbed out of the car. He took the coffee with him.

I swung by Speare Memorial, got Ricky’s room number from a young nurse in a cardigan sweater, then went up in the hospital elevator. As soon as the door opened I spotted Mr. Adelar. He sat in an easy chair reading a Farmer’s Almanac someone had left in the waiting room. The TV behind him broadcasted Granite State Challenge, a quiz game that pitted one New Hampshire high-school team against another. I heard Manchester’s Trinity High School mentioned, but then Mr. Adelar looked up.

“Afternoon,” I said. “How’s Ricky doing?”

“Better,” Adelar said.

He put the almanac aside and stood. He was a tall, thin guy with an outsized Adam’s apple. You couldn’t look at him without thinking about blue herons. He worked for the state’s agricultural department. Something to do with lumber production, out of the Fish & Game Department in Plymouth.

“Still disassociated,” Adelar said. “Really it’s just wait and see. He recognizes us, knows where he is, but he’s not sure of the day of the week, the President, stuff like that.”

“Does he still maintain he took Ecstasy?”

“He isn’t that precise. Have you talked to this vampire fellow he mentioned?”

“Not yet.”

“Are you going to search his house?”

Trinity High School buzzed in on a question. What Caribbean country’s volcano recently erupted, causing the population to evacuate?

Trinity’s team captain said: Bermuda.

The quizmaster buzzed. Wrong answer.

“Guys like this fellow,” I said, “never have the stuff in their houses. A guy up in Rumney buried a school bus in a retired stockbroker’s field. Turned it into a pot factory. Little generator, the whole thing. Grow lights. Made it through three seasons before someone finally spotted him going through a manhole cover into the ground. Most we’d get if we searched the place would be a little pot, if that.”

“So then what do you do?” Adelar asked.

The other team buzzed in, said, Barbados, and got buzzed, too.

Montserrat, the quizmaster said.

“I’m going to see him right after this,” I said. “We’ll make it uncomfortable for him.”

Mrs. Adelar stepped out of Ricky’s room and nodded at me. If Mr. Adelar was a heron, Mrs. Adelar was a trout. Her ankles and neck had about the same thickness. She was as balanced as a throwing knife. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt that had a black dog on it. The black dog promoted beer and a certain bar.

“He’s asleep,” Mrs. Adelar said. “He drops off so suddenly it terrifies me.”

Mr. Adelar slipped his arm over his wife’s shoulders.

I reached down and picked up the Farmer’s Almanac. Sunset, according to the chart, had already happened five minutes ago.

The Goth girl opened the door.

“Is he awake yet?” I asked.

“He’s awake but he says you need a warrant.”

“Tell him he watches too many TV shows about cops. Tell him he doesn’t really want to make this more difficult than it needs to be.”

She looked at me. The streetlight caught the speckle of her studs.

“Stay there,” she said.

I did. I turned around and looked at the street and thought about vampires. If I were a vampire, I figured, I’d live someplace warmer. Maybe Florida. Maybe Louisiana. New Hampshire seemed like a hard place to be a vampire. People stayed indoors in winter and wore turtlenecks.

I turned back to the door when I heard it open.

“Come in,” she said, “but he hasn’t fed yet.”

“Fed?”

She nodded.

“You don’t want to anger him,” she said.

“I wouldn’t want that,” I agreed.

She shrugged.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Wolf,” she said.

“Wolf?” I asked. “Like the dog?”

“Like the wolf.”

“As in ‘bay at the moon’?”

She nodded.

“Got it,” I said.

I followed her down a very ugly hallway, past two doors that might have led to sitting rooms when the house had a different spirit, then into a large ell kitchen. The kitchen, in the dim light, looked as though it had last been renovated during the 1950s. Linoleum floor, vinyl counters, red plastic kitchen chairs. It was retro without having a clue what retro meant. A chicken-shaped clock clicked above the sink. Or clucked. The chicken hadn’t cleaned the dishes below it in some time, and neither had anyone else in the house.

Wolf turned around and left.

The vampire sat at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette. He wore black. He had a horse-head, a long, thin skull that made his chin hang too far out from his chest. He had as many studs in his face as Wolf. He looked slack and thin, but, I considered, maybe he would look better after he fed. He might have been thirty. He resembled a guy who came back to the high-school reunion and still couldn’t figure out why everyone still wanted to shove him in a locker.

He stood. He was short, maybe five nine. He wore a chain around his waist. Someone had bolted the chain into the wall behind him. A leash. He offered a chair. I sat. He sat. The kitchen table sat between us. The vampire jabbed out his cigarette and folded his hands.

“We have a kid named Ricky Adelar who says you sold him Ecstasy,” I said. “The kid’s in a hospital acting a little unglued.”

“Kids says the darndest things,” the vampire said, “don’t they?”

He smiled. Now I got the full dazzle. His upper teeth had been filed into points. He had a shark mouth. If you were fifteen years old, and escorted into this room, the combined vampire effect would have been pretty good.

“Kids do say funny things,” I said. “But he says he bought it from you and that’s not all that funny.”

The vampire spread his hands.

“Yippee,” he said.

“If the kid died, it could be murder.”

“Everyone dies,” he said.

“Not vampires.”

“Christians drink the blood of Christ for eternal life. We drink other blood. Different strokes.”

It was a prepared speech. I bet he gave it all the time.

“You always wear the chain?” I asked.

“Always,” he said. “Except when I don’t.”

He smiled to say I couldn’t ruffle him. And to show me his teeth.

“Here’s the thing,” I said. “I could get a warrant and come back and search the place and maybe I’ll still do that. Or maybe I could hear that you stopped coming around the kids and that maybe you even decided to leave town. Either way, you’re on notice. If you decide to stay, it will probably be a matter of time before you get picked up. Meanwhile, Ricky may remember more about what went on with his purchase. We may even get a few other kids to remember a few things. It might take a little while, but your string is going to run out. That’s the way these things go.”