Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

“ To this day, Rosnich has eluded capture,” finished Captain Kaseem. “I… I was the man called in to examine the body. When I heard about your vampire killer in Wisconsin, I naturally became interested, and when I contacted my superiors, they contacted Leamy, and Leamy asked us in.”

“ Asked you in, I rather doubt.”

“ All right, so Leamy owed a favor. Nonetheless, we're here, and at least now you have a suspect.”

“ You should have told us about this suspect a long time ago.”

“ We did.”

“ Through whom?”

“ I am not at liberty to say.”

“ God damn you, Kaseem, you'd better get at liberty to say, or I'm calling your bloody superiors and Chief Leamy and anyone else I must! Now, who?”

Kaseem sputtered a name, saying, “Teres…”

“ Teres? Teresa? O'Rourke?”

“ Yes, Teresa O'Rourke.”

“ O'Rourke?” she repeated, dumbfounded for the moment.

“ She and I… we've been seeing each other for some time.”

She dropped her gaze, nodding. “Your search for Rosnich, has it zeroed in on Chicago as possibly his current stamping grounds?”

“ It has, yes.”

“ So O'Rourke is smarter than even she knows.”

Kaseem became indignant at this. “Look here, what is wrong with two law enforcement agencies working together?' '

“ Working together? Had you given us this information on Rosnich, we might have already done a blood check with military records on him, and a fingerprint check, and a-”

“ O'Rourke said she would see to all of that.”

“ She did?”

“ Yes, and it was my understanding that your forensics people have it.”

“ Christ, then why don't I know about it?”

“ I might assume you've not seen the forest for the trees.”

“ No, you may not. What I haven't seen has been kept from me. That you may be sure of.”

She stalked to the cockpit and demanded to use the comlink with the ground. She asked to be patched through to the forensics lab at Quantico, preferably John Thorpe. Thorpe was out. She was put through and recognized Dr. Zachary Raynack's voice on the other end asking how he might be of service.

“ You might begin by faxing every fucking thing you have on Davie Rosnich to Chicago and being damned certain, Doctor, that it is waiting for me there, you old sonofabitch!”

“ Now, just a minute, young woman-”

“ I am not your young woman, Doctor! I'm your boss, and if you can't live with that, if you think you can work around me, then you've got another think coming.”

“ I am carrying through only on what Chief Leamy had asked of me.”

“ Leamy, no. O'Rourke, yes.”

He was silent at the other end and she knew she had him. “Now, I want that information, in full, waiting for me when I get to Chicago. Fax it to our bureau there with a request it get to me in Zion. Do you follow, Doctor? Zach? Do you copy that?”

“ Yes, yes,” he grumbled, and hung up.

“ Bastard,” she muttered under her breath, seeing the two flight crewmen smiling at the show they were privy to. She stormed back to Kaseem. “Your girlfriend must want to crack this case very badly, Dr. Kaseem. She's quite an ambitious woman, isn't she?”

“ Teresa has only one goal, and that is the same as yours. We were not exactly welcomed in by you and Dr. Thorpe, and so I went to her. I see no problem with working around you if you are not interested in working with the military.”

“ AFIP, Doctor. Not the military. I have a great deal of respect for the military usually, but the AFIP tried once to ruin my father's reputation, and no, there's no love lost between us. As for cooperating, what were you doing in Iowa City, looking over my shoulder at that dead girl we had to exhume, knowing about this man Rosnich and not saying a word to me about it?”

“ Your attitude dictated my attitude, Dr. Coran.”

She soothed a bit. “How old would this Rosnich be now?”

“ Twenty-nine.”

“ The approximate age of our killer, possibly in Chicago, with some medical training. Christ, if a fingerprint or a blood sample links this man to the victims…” She allowed her thoughts to trail off. If O'Rourke got the killer, independent of Boutine, while Boutine was too involved with personal difficulties from being at his wife's bedside to burying her, O'Rourke would shine in Leamy's eyes. Otto had said there was some talk of his being forced into an early retirement, a rumor saying he was burned out. Had O'Rourke seen her chance and simply stepped into the breach, or had she started the rumors?

“ I want to see what photographs you have of Rosnich, and anything else you have on him,” she demanded of Kaseem.

“ Then we are finally working together?”

She felt her jaw tighten and her chin quiver. “Yes, if that's what it takes.” Uncanny was how she had felt about O'Rourke's pinpointing where the killer must live, and the other assessments she had made about him, including his age, and the reason they should go with profile three. If it was all based on Rosnich, it could well be the wrong man and the wrong profile. Otto must be told. Otto must deal with O'Rourke and patch up the shaky profile and the team itself.

She looked at the picture of the soldier turned killer in West Germany wondering how he had eluded police and had gotten to America, if indeed he was the vampire who found Annie Copeland in Wekosha, Wisconsin. The face was young and the eyes questioning in the photo that Kaseem handed her. The hair was wild, unkempt, and the mouth was set in a little, derisive half-smile at the cameraman. It was a military mug shot. Rosnich had been in the guardhouse more than once for fighting and thievery.

She tried to imagine what he would look like today. The photo almost masked a scar on his temple. Rosnich was bom in a suburb of Chicago called Wheaton. Could Wheaton be the home of the blood addict?

She asked Kaseem about the details of the killing in West Germany and the investigation itself. She was trying to tie these details to what she knew about the killer.

“ Was the victim hung upside down?”

“ By his heels, yes. That's what first attracted us to your case.”

“ Were the victim's tendons cut?”

“ No.”

“ What kind of knot was used?”

“ Sling knot.”

' 'And the slash, was it a left-handed cut or a right-handed cut?”

“ Left-handed.”

“ Was there an unusual absence of blood?”

“ The man drank his blood.”

“ How do you know that?”

“ He was seen doing so by some children hiding in the bushes.”

“ All right, but was the cut to the jugular a deep penetration, and was there much pooling of blood below the corpse?”

“ Sure, lots of blood, but that's only because the guy was just a kid, new at it. He hadn't thought it out. It was just a sudden, impulsive act that-”

“ But not so impulsive that he didn't plan it? He did lure the other man out there,” she countered.

“ We still believe it could be the same man.”

“ So it could be. According to the experts, there are maybe three hundred blood-drinkers in the U.S. and Canada, so he could as well not be our man.”

“ Experts? What experts?”

“ Otto Boutine. He knows more about Tort 9s than anyone.”

Kaseem nodded respectfully.

' 'Look, we can put out an all-points on your man, get an FBI artist on this photo, touch it up, age the guy appropriately, and maybe even get a bust made of him. If he is our killer, we'll do whatever's necessary to get him. This is not a contest to see who gets him first, Dr. Kaseem; it only matters that he is stopped.”

“ The military wants him.”

“ The FBI wants him.”

“ The two do not have to be mutually exclusive, Dr. Coran.”