Bad Moon Rising (Pine Deep 3)

“Jesus…” said LaMastra. “What the hell did he use? Looks like one of those two-pronged forks you roast hot dogs with. ”

Ferro looked hard at Weinstock. “And this was the cause of death? These…uh, stab wounds?”

“No. The actual cause of death of both men was a nearly total exsanguination. They were both completely drained of blood. ”

“When you say ‘completely’…?” Ferro arched an eyebrow.

“During the autopsy, I was able to recover a total of forty-eight cc’s of blood. That would fill a large syringe, gentlemen, and that is all I recovered in total from both bodies. In essence, the bodies were sucked dry. ”

Ferro began shaking his head, and LaMastra burst out laughing. “Oh, come on, Doc! What are you selling here, that they guys were offed by a vampire?”

Weinstock did not laugh, didn’t even smile. He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest, and just looked at them.

Ferro rolled his eyes. “I think we’re done here. ”

Val got to her feet to block him from standing. “Frank, please just hear him out. ”

“I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense—”

“I can prove this,” Weinstock said.

LaMastra was still grinning. “You’re going to prove to us that there are vampires in Pine Deep?”

Dr. Weinstock returned the smile, but his

was cold and humorless. “Yes. ”

Ferro folded his arms and tilted his head to one side, giving him a challenging, mocking look. Weinstock reached for another folder, but Crow interrupted him. “Saul, just show them the fricking tape. ”

“What tape?” LaMastra wanted to know.

Weinstock opened his top desk drawer and removed a Sony digital cassette still in its cardboard jacket. “Surveillance camera tape from the security camera at the morgue. ”

“Of what? The autopsy?” Ferro asked.

“Not exactly. ” Weinstock handed the tape to Crow, who put it in the machine. “This was recorded automatically by the morgue cameras the night after Boyd stole Ruger’s body,” explained Weinstock. On the screen, the time display read 8:00 P. M. “The security guard patrolling the hospital changes all of the tapes every day and each tape records just twenty-four hours of footage. Unlike the tapes from the hall camera, the morgue tapes are never actually viewed unless there is an autopsy in progress or some reason to believe an event has occurred, such as when we discovered Ruger’s body missing from the morgue. This tape would never have been looked at except for the fact that I noticed some irregularities the next day when I was doing routine work in the morgue. ”

“What kind of irregularities?” asked Ferro.

“When Boyd broke in to steal Ruger’s body he messed with the corpses of Cowan and Castle. I wanted to do a detailed examination of each man so we’d have a detailed record of any additional postmortem mutilation. Mind you, at this point even I didn’t believe what the evidence was trying to tell me. I was putting together a puzzle without knowing the picture. When I got in that morning the morgue doors were locked and at first everything looked kosher. It wasn’t until I wheeled Castle out of his cold storage and brought him into the autopsy room that I saw the changes. ”

“Changes?”

“Physical changes. At first I thought it was just the lighting, but even with changing the angle of the lights, there were definite physical changes. ”

“Such as?”

“Skin color, for one. Instead of the waxy, blue-white skin typical of a postautopsied corpse, I was looking at what appeared to be normal skin tone. ”

“Normal for a dead man, you mean?”

“No, normal for a living person. There were no signs of pallor, the skin was pink as if flushed with blood. Even the lips seemed red and swollen. Because of the apparent lividity I decided to check for trace amounts of blood in the skin. ”

“I thought you said the corpses had been totally drained of blood. ”

“They had,” Weinstock said. “They had. But when I cut into Jimmy Castle’s skin that morning, real blood welled out of the wound. ”

Ferro frowned. “Welled out, you say?”