Pushing herself off the bed, Kenzie staggered toward the dresser to put on some clothes. She'd packed capris and short-sleeved shirts for warmer temperatures, but it looked like her stay in Bridgeport would be completely shrouded in clouds and rain.
As soon as she was finished getting dressed, her cell phone rang. Kenzie answered it with a drowsy, "Hello?"
"Ms. Howell?" Carson's voice said on the other end.
"Chief Tobias. Good morning."
"Good morning. I just wanted to let you know that I got your email and I've been reviewing these pictures you took. I also got a message from Margo. Did you have some sort of run-in with her yesterday?"
"You could say that. I just wanted to ask her some questions."
"Well, I guess she took offense to them. Her message was pretty lengthy with her explanation as to why she was emailing me and not you with her findings."
"I'm sorry, but I have to look at this case from all angles. And it's possible..."
"Yes, she told me how you treated her like a suspect. I'm grateful that you're here to help with this case, but might I suggest that you have evidence to back up your claims before confronting potential suspects?"
Kenzie clutched her phone tightly. Margo had blown the whole thing completely out of proportion.
"Chief," she said desperately, "I didn't mean to offend her. I'm just suggesting that, since she believes in vampires, she'd know how to create the evidence to make people suspect that a vampire is responsible for all these deaths. Or, she could be trying to send a message to her daughter. Who, by the way, I haven't been able to talk to yet. But that leads me to another point. Valerie is supposedly obsessed with vampires to the point that she wants to become one. Maybe she's partly responsible for these deaths. She'd have good reason to drain the bodies of blood, and she even considered the bite marks in the necks."
"Ms. Howell, do you have any idea how asinine that sounds?"
"Yeah, it even sounds crazy to my own ears, but like I said, I have to look at this case from every perspective. I'd like to talk to Valerie."
"Well, good luck with that. Valerie's a minor, so she'd need a parent or advocate present if you talked to her, and I'm sure Margo wouldn't appreciate it."
"If they're both innocent, it wouldn't matter. If there's some sort of problem with a simple inquisition, they might have something to hide."
Kenzie could hear Carson heave a sigh on the other end of the line. He'd hired her to come to Bridgeport and solve this case, so he should be understanding and respecting of her methods of doing just that.
Still, even to her own ears, she had to admit that her theories sounded a little eccentric. But right now, it was all she had.
Carson finally surrendered and asked Kenzie to come to the police station so they could discuss the case in person. She was off the phone and out the door in under five minutes.
However, when she got to the station, Kenzie was greeted by utter chaos. Allison, the officer from the other day, was talking to another officer who had a teenage girl dressed all in black behind him. Carson was trying to calm the girl down, but to no avail.
"This is none of your business!" the girl was screaming at the top of her lungs. By her appearance and behavior alone, Kenzie ascertained that this girl had to be Margo's daughter, Valerie.
"What's going on?" Kenzie asked, stepping forward. Instead of getting an answer, Valerie shrieked, "Let me go! You'll regret this, all of you! I'll kill you all!"
Kenzie raised her eyebrows and tried to stifle an eye-roll. Typical rebellious teenager.
"Did anyone get in touch of Margo?" Carson was asking impatiently. Allison replied, "Yes, sir, and she wasn't too happy. She's on her way now."
"She can't tell me what to do!" Valerie declared with vehemence. "None of you can! Leave me alone!"
"Officer Biggs," Carson pleaded tiredly. The burly officer who'd been talking to Allison finally withdrew some handcuffs and snapped them on Valerie's wrists. She struggled to break free, but her efforts were futile.
Finally, Carson led Kenzie back to his office. He sat down with a resonating sigh and Kenzie followed suit.
"What the heck is going on?" Kenzie asked again. Carson rubbed his eyes and replied, "That's Valerie Kingston, Margo's daughter. The one that wants to be a vampire."
Kenzie didn't point out that she'd already determined that. Instead, she let Carson continue.
"Officer Biggs was driving on his morning route and he saw her jumping in between buildings and skipping school. She's convinced that, since she's going to become a vampire someday, she doesn't need to go to school. But the law states that she has to if she's able, and I say she is. At least, physically. I'm not always so sure about mentally. I swear, that girl gets a little worse every time I see her."
He said that last part almost to himself. "If this gets much worse..."
Carson stopped, so Kenzie prodded, "What?"
Carson sighed again before saying, "If this gets much worse, she'll wind up in a juvenile detention center. She keeps skipping school, thinks she's above the law, and won't give up on this vampire stuff."
"I guess I can understand why Margo is under so much pressure. Maybe she's afraid her daughter really is guilty, and she doesn't want to face the truth. You know, that would also give her motive to hide any evidence that might be on the bodies. To cover for her daughter. Some things might be missing in the coroner's reports."
Carson glanced at Kenzie sharply.
"I doubt it," he said. "She'd lose her job and be arrested for obstruction of justice if she did any of that."
"I think her daughter is more important to her than her job. She might be doing it alone, or she may have an accomplice committing all these murders to send a message to her daughter."
"What kind of message? That vampires kill humans? At this rate I don't think Valerie really cares who she'd end up hurting."
"No, maybe she's trying to show her daughter how bad vampires are, the way she sees them, based on Bridgeport's history."
"I suppose that could be, but I hope you have some sort of proof of that claim."
"Unfortunately I don't, I'm just shooting off theories."
Before Carson could reply, the phone on his desk rang. He answered it a little more sardonically than Kenzie felt necessary.
"This is Tobias," he said into the receiver. The person on the other end of the line said something that made Carson nearly fall out of his chair. After steadying himself, he said into the phone, "When was this?"
When he hung up, his expression had changed completely.
"This isn't going to be a good day," he muttered.
"What's wrong?"
"Another body has just been discovered. But this one's different."
"Different? How?"
"This one was actually hidden, unlike the others. It's like whoever did this tried to keep the body from being discovered."
"That breaks the pattern. Were there puncture wounds on the victim?"
"Actually, no. The report didn't say anything about puncture wounds, but the body's still lost a lot of blood. But it hasn't lost all the blood. Just some of it."
"That's weird. It's like the killer is getting sloppy, or maybe there's a copycat on the loose. Let's go see the body."
"Just what I was about to suggest. After you."
So Kenzie got up from the chair and headed out the door, with Carson right behind her. She was getting very worried. She'd barely been in Bridgeport for a full day and the bodies kept stacking up. This had to stop. And Kenzie was determined to get to the bottom if this case once and for all.
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