Robert Walker - Killer Instinct

And given the fact the note was signed Teach, it had to be the same man who had written a letter to her in Virginia and had mailed it from Hammond, Indiana, on his way to kill Tommy Fowler in Indianapolis.

She was, by the end of her exhaustive scanning of the body and the physical evidence of the bloody note, convinced that the man calling himself Teach was still very much alive.

Then Boutine and Brewer noisily arrived, proclaiming irrefutable evidence that Lowenthal was Teach.

They had unearthed the most telling, incriminating evidence in the man's private lockbox. He was undeniably Otto's Tort 9 monster. For not only had the man designed the spigot, but here were papers of the design showing that he had recently applied for a patent with the U.S. Government Patent Office in D.C.

“ Imagine that, imagine that,” Brewer was saying, “to be that nuts, that you go out and get a patent on the murder weapon you use. One for the books.”

Kaseem had not returned with them, perhaps accepting this new information as the final word on the Chicago vampire.

“ You can't deny what's before your eyes, Jess,” Otto said to her as she scanned the schematics of the deadly little straw that Lowenthal had created.

No one, not even she, could deny that Maurice Lowenthal was indeed involved with the vampire killings, yet some nagging doubts remained. Was the vampire really dead??

There was an almost perceptible, tangible sigh of relief from all of Chicago when the evening news reported an end to the vampire killings. Lowenthal's picture was flashed on every news network, and he was described as the cruel, sadistic killer that had a taste for blood. One enterprising young reporter had even learned that Lowenthal had been sent to various hospitals and places such as Wekosha, Wisconsin, as part of his job. The times of his business visits didn't entirely mesh with the time frame of the killings, but it was felt that he must have gone back to these locations on his own. A spokesperson for Balue-Stork downplayed his connection with the company, saying that he was a low-level employee who had a gift for instrument design, but that he had retired some time ago.

His retirement, Jessica had learned, was the November before the Wekosha killing. She remained skeptical, and when reporters confronted her she kept a chill distance, saying over and over, “No comment, no comment.”

When pushed outside the Chicago Crime Laboratory to disclose her feelings about the case's coming to a close, she said bluntly, “It isn't closed until it's scientifically closed. The FBI does not close a case until it has the stamp of forensic proof required to close it. Is that understood?”

At his home, where he seldom watched TV, Matt Matisak glared now at the replay of events surrounding Lowenthal's death. The chief of police in Chicago had said it was the surest thing he had ever seen; that they had gotten their man. An FBI guy named Brewer said practically the same thing, but here was this bitch holding out as if she knew something no one else knew. She was smug about it, too. So cocksure.

Teach stewed about it. He thought about it all evening long. Suppose she did find something; suppose she did know the truth? Was she that good? She'd been a thorn in his side since Wekosha. She alone seemed to know about him, enough so that he felt a strange bond with her, as if they had an ongoing relationship from the moment he had read about her in the newspapers. It was as if she were reaching out to him, wanting desperately to touch him, to sit down and really communicate with him.

He wondered how he could make her wish come true…

There were ways of finding out where she was staying.

There were ways of attracting her attention, of luring her out.

There were ways… and when she fell into his trap, she'd become his next victim.

But it must be done right.

And he would need an accomplice who was a fool.

He knew the perfect fool.

He knew the perfect place.

He had the perfect plan.

“ Yes, yes… time we met, sweetheart,” Teach said to the film image of Dr. Jessica Coran. “I'll make all the arrangements.”

He then made a phone call, but quickly slammed the phone down. No, he mustn't contact Gamble by phone. Phone company records could give him away.

Gamble was a retarded employee at Balue-Stork's busy, cluttered mailroom. He was easily manipulated. He could be the perfect stand-in for Teach, and so if Lowenthal wasn't enough for the bastards, Lowenthal's associate in crime, Gamble, would be.

“ Of course,” he told himself, “the Chicago vampire is really two people. They'll love it.”

He quickly dressed. His adrenaline was pumping. This might be the best after all, doing Jessica Coran. He'd have to have some of her blood. He knew he'd be unable to walk away from her blood as he had Lowenthal's. She was classy, so sure of herself, and so very intelligent. Her blood was worth something. But he knew he'd have to leave the majority of her blood in jars all about Gamble's place, after he killed both Gamble and Coran.

The plan would take every ounce of willpower he possessed, and to help it along, he'd bring some of Fowler's blood to stave off the urges that were sure to come under the circumstances.

Fully dressed, his plan coming to full fruition, he began to locate the necessary items he must take to Gamble's place. He began packing the van in the dark. His neighbor with his damned dog stopped to chat about the pleasant breeze, about the brilliance of the stars and the clear night overhead, and then he moved on to the awful condition of some of the fences in the area and something to do with an altercation with Mrs. Philbin at the end of the street-something to do with his dog and her dog.

“ I'm sorry but I can't talk just now,” he told the neighbor.

“ Never hardly ever see you, and when I do, it's usually when you're going out. But you usually go out early. Why so late?”

“ Work… emergency. You know the routine.”

The man's dog growled as if he smelled something foul on Matisak's pants leg.

“ Stop that! Stop it, Toby. Sorry,” he apologized. “Don't know what gets into him.”

“ Prob'ly smells the cat on me.”

“ Oh, yes, you're a cat person, aren't you?”

“ Really have to go now.”

“ Sure. I'll stop in sometime for coffee, maybe.”

“ Sure… sometime.”

He watched the nosy bastard move off with his terrier, glad to see them go. He quickly finished loading the van with the cooler, the briefcase and the power tools that had been Lowenthal's. If he left them with Gamble, he'd have to make some new purchases. Sears was currently running a sale on Craftsman tools.

He climbed into the van, closed the garage door with the automatic and slowly drove out into the night, the green dash lights splashing the pockmarked features of his face.

Once this Coran woman was dead, and after some time passed, he'd go back to his vampiring; until then, however, he'd feed on blood packs he might pick up from hospital banks as he did with the cortisone. Once things died down a bit, he'd return to the alluring hunt for prey and he'd get his blood the way he preferred.

# # #

“ We can leave the details and cleanup to Brewer's boys,” Otto was telling her over lunch at Berghoff’s in downtown Chicago, “and you and I can be back at Quantico this afternoon, if you'll just accept the fact that it's over, Jess. You're going to have to sooner or later, and it may as well be-”

“ I've got to be certain. Otto.”

“ What's that supposed to mean? That I don't have to be certain?”

“ I didn't say that. I've got access to the Chicago Crime Lab, one of the best in the country, and given a little more time, maybe I can convince myself that you and Brewer and the rest of the country are right. I want to check that partial print from the pill we found in Zion against Lowenthal's print to-”