Paradigms Lost (3 page)

“I don’t like it
now
, Wood. Let me have it.”

“Sylvie thinks we are dealing with a vampire.”

There was a long silence. “Would you repeat that?”

“A vampire. As in Dracula.”

Another silence. “Yeah. And damned if I don’t half-believe it, either. I must be getting gullible. But no way can I take this to my supervisor. He’s the most closed-minded son-of-a-bitch who ever wore blue.”

I laughed. “I don’t expect you to do anything about it. Just keep an eye out. I’m going to start some research of my own. If we
are
dealing with something . . .” I trailed off, paused, then force myself to say it, “. . . paranormal, I doubt that normal approaches will work.”

“God, listen to us. Vampires? I’ll call you later, Jason. This is too weird for me to handle right now.”

I cradled the receiver. I couldn’t blame her for needing time to sort it all out. Hell, I was stunned that she accepted it as much as she did. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she must already have decided that something was very wrong about those other deaths.

All right. Let’s get to work, Jason
.

I went upstairs into my library, started pulling down books—folklore references I’d collected over the years, mostly, including
Vampires: A World Survey
, which was the closest thing to a scholarly compendium on the subject I’d ever found. Most of these things came from my information addiction overlapping with my fiction reading; I couldn’t resist trying to fact check even my horror novels. Bad facts didn’t stop me from
reading
them, of course, but I liked to know what was real and was wasn’t.

I sat down at my workstation, started keying in information from each book. The
World Survey
emphasized what I’d already known: the vampire myth existed in some form in almost every corner of the world—from South America to Japan, China to Europe. The abilities and weaknesses of the creatures varied wildly, from the original shambling zombielike corpses of Eastern Europe to China and Japan’s strange “hopping vampires” to . . .

I glanced back at the shelves and wondered if I should include anything from the fictional side. Yes, at first glance that sounded stupid, but if I was going to assume there
were
such things as . . . vampires, there was the possibility that one or more books had been written by people who knew that they existed and something of what they were like.

And . . . again if I was right . . . they’d already apparently shown two of the characteristics often attributed to fictional vampires: superhuman strength and the ability to disappear or turn into mist.

I sighed, got up, and picked out a selection of vampire novels—the original
Dracula
, Yarbro’s Saint Germain books, Rice’s
Lestat
, a few others that covered a range of tastes.
I’ll extract the key points as possibilities and put them in with a low but significant weight.

After three hours, my neck and arms started getting really cramped. I broke for a late lunch or maybe dinner, headed back towards the computer just as the phone rang.

“Wood’s Information Ser—”

“Hello, Wood.”

I knew that gravel-scraping voice, even though it usually didn’t call before the night shift. Then I looked at the clock and realized it
was
the night shift.
That’s what you get for sleeping until after noon
. “Hi, Elias. I’ve got your photos done.”

“Anything good?”

“Let’s just say I’ll be real surprised if we aren’t electing a new assemblyman soon.”

He laughed, a quick explosive chortle. “With an attitude like that, I don’t see you getting on jury duty, that’s for sure. Listen, I’ll be over to pick ’em up soon. ’Bout an hour and a half good?”

“Sure thing, Elias.”

I needed a break from blood-sucking freaks anyway. I pulled the envelope from the safe, rechecking the pictures on the disk against the negatives. By the time my recheck was done, Elias was there. “Hey there, Jase,” he said, ducking slightly as he entered. He really didn’t have to—the doorway’s seven feet high and he’s six foot six—but it was a habit he had. Add a gangly frame, a sharp-edged nose, black hair, black eyes, and a slight stoop; Elias Klein always reminded me of a youthful buzzard. He came into my office to get a quick look. He liked them all, until we got to the last one.

“Nice joke, Jason.”

“What do you mean, joke? It looks pretty good to me.”

“Oh, sure, Assemblyman Connors looks just lovely. But without Verne Domingo to complete the picture it’s nothing but a publicity shot.”

I pointed to the next to last. “What about that one? They’re swapping right there, what more could you ask for?”

“That’s just a second-string doper, Jason! Domingo’s the big man, the guy we’ve been after the whole time I’ve been on this case, and
that
is the photo that should show him.”

I shrugged. “Too bad. Next time make sure he’s in the picture.”

“Don’t give me that, Wood! I
know
he was in that shot, I was the one looking through the viewfinder.”

I handed him the negative. “Look for yourself.”

He stared at it. “What the hell?” Then he swung towards me. “Wood, you’d better not be dicking around with the evidence! I’ve been on this for eight damn months, and if you’re—”

“Oh, cut the tough cop act, Elias. You know damn well that I only play jokes; I don’t mess with my clients’ stuff. If I did, would the city PD be paying me ten grand a year? That negative is the one you gave me and it’s in the same shape as it was when it got here.”

“But that’s impossible.” Elias glared at the negative as though a hard stare would make the missing figure materialize. “If you look through the viewfinder of an SLR, what you see is what you get. Besides, dammit, look at your own enhancement. He’s got his mouth half-open, saying something, and he’s about to shake hands. Then look at that angle. Do you put your hand out twenty feet from the guy you’re going to shake with?”

“Nope.” I was mystified now. Then the memory of a quote spun across my mind:

This time there could be no error, for the man was close to me, and I could see him over my shoulder. But there was no reflection of him in my mirror!

I took the negative and stared at it again. “You’re right, Elias. Mr. Domingo
should
have been in this picture. That leaves only one explanation.”

He looked at me. “And that is . . . ?”

“That you are dealing with someone whose image doesn’t appear on film.”

Elias didn’t like that at all, but he had to admit that I had no motive to screw around with the negatives. “So what’re you saying? He’s got some kind of
Star Trek
cloaking device that wipes his image off film? I won’t swallow it.”

“Trust me, Elias, you don’t want to know what I think. Since this negative is worthless as is, mind if I keep it? Maybe there’s some kind of latent image I could bring up.”

“Dammit, Jason! Tell me what is—” He broke off, having caught sight of the pile of books and papers on the desk.

He looked at them. He picked them up, examined them. Looked at me. “And Reisman said . . .” he began, then stopped. He glanced at the negative again. Back at me. A long pause. “You’re right,” he said finally. “I don’t want to know. Keep the negative.” He grabbed his hat and sunglasses, left quickly.

I went back to typing.

The phone rang again.

“Hello, Jason,” said Sylvie. “What have you heard?”

“Enough. I apologize for doubting you, Sylvie. We’ve either got ourselves a real honest-to-God vampire here, or someone who is doing his level best to fake it. And with the technical problems of faking some of this, I’d rather believe in a vampire than in a faker.” I glanced down. “And I think I’ve found our bloodsucker, too.” I gave her a quick rundown on Klein’s negative.

“But, Jason, isn’t that an incredible coincidence?”

“I thought so myself, at first. But I’ve been thinking, and it isn’t as far out as it first seems. In most legit businesses you have to do business in daylight hours at some point. Maybe a vampire
can
live in a musty coffin underground all the time, but I’ll bet they sure don’t want to. They want all the creature comforts they can enjoy and that means money. So they’ll just naturally gravitate to the ‘shady’ side of commerce, pardon the pun. And with their natural advantages, it isn’t surprising that one might be high up on the ladder.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way. But drug deals happen in the daytime, too.”

“If you’ve got muscle to back you up, you can get away with a lot of odd quirks. Avoiding sunlight might be possible.” I nodded to myself. “And Lewis acted as an informant to me; might have done so to the police, or—more likely—he’d tell me and expect I’d get it to them. So if Lewis had seen something and come to tell me . . .”

“Oh, the poor man,” Syl said softly. “But you’re right, it does make sense. And, by the way, apology accepted. I’ve been calling around and getting my better occult acquaintances on the alert. They’ll see what they can find.”

“Good.” Privately, I didn’t expect much from Sylvie’s pals. Sylvie herself might have something, but most of the people who visited the Silver Stake were your typical muddled New Age escapists who confused Tolkien and
Star Wars
with real life. “I’m working on something here that might help. Stop by after you’re done, okay?”

“Sure thing, Jason. Just promise me no more bodies, huh?”

“I make no guarantees. Bodies never consult me before arriving. See you.”

“Bye.”

It was ten o’clock by the time I finished. Then I put WISDOM to work. Wood’s Information Service Database Online Manager can analyze information using many different statistical methods and a lot of other heuristics. WISDOM was instructed to examine the information on all different kinds of vampires to construct the most likely abilities that an actual vampire might be expected to possess. It took WISDOM only a few minutes to do its calculations. I sat down and read. It was grim reading.

CHAPTER 3

Contingency Planning

“What in the world are you doing?” Sylvie asked.

I put down the loading kit. “Preparing. I figure that if I’m going to deal with a vampire, I’d better have something other than conventional ammo.”

She picked up a cartridge. “Silver? I thought I read somewhere that you actually couldn’t make silver bullets; something about balance?”

“I heard that too, but it’s a silly statement on the face of it. Lead’s softer and just as heavy, and they’ve been making bullets from lead as long as they’ve been making guns. Yes, you have to make a few adjustments, but nothing prevents a silver bullet from working as a bullet.” I checked the fit of another bullet. “Not that I expect those to be of much use. WISDOM only gave a twenty-five-percent chance of vulnerability to silver. That seems more of a werewolf thing.”

She examined the other kinds of ammo. “Well, I’ll say this for you, you have one heck of an assortment.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a small wooden box. “Here, Jason.”

“What’s this?” I opened the box. On a slender silver chain was a crystal-headed hammer, handle wrapped in miniature leather thongs, the head an angle-faced box. “It’s gorgeous, Syl! Thank you!”

“I remembered how much you like the Norse pantheon—you even named your car after Thor’s hammer—and if you look real closely on the hammer head, you’ll see
Mjölnir
engraved there in Nordic runes.”

I squinted closely at it, and I could just make out the spiderweb-thin runic lines. “It’s really beautiful, Sylvie. But why now?”

“I was actually saving it for your birthday next month, but with this vampire thing going on, I decided it was best I give it to you now.” She saw my puzzlement. “It’s not just a piece of jewelry, Jason. I made it especially to be a focus, a protection against evil, for you.”

“But you know I don’t really believe in that stuff.”

She gave a lopsided smile. “Jason Wood, how in the world can you believe in vampires and sneer at crystals and spirits?”

“Touché.” I slipped the chain over my neck. It felt cool against my skin. The three-inch-long hammer made a slight bulge below my collar. “This could look a little strange. I don’t wear jewelry often. I think I’ll put it on the wall. Or on Mjölnir’s rearview mirror.”

“No, Jason.” Sylvie had her “feeling” face on again. “Wear it. Even if you don’t believe, it will make me feel better if you keep it on you.”

I wasn’t about to test her accuracy now. I was about eighty-five percent convinced we were dealing with some kind of creature that might as well be called a vampire, and one-hundred percent convinced that Syl had some way of knowing things she shouldn’t. “Okay.”

“Now what else has your machine come up with?”

“Nothing good. The problem is that there are so many versions of the vampire legend in myth and fiction that the best I can do is estimate probabilities. Problem with that is that even a low-probability thing could turn out to be real.” I picked up a printout. “But I can’t prepare for everything. So I’ve constructed a ‘theoretical vampire’ using all the probabilities that showed a greater than eighty-percent likelihood.” I started reading. “Strength, somewhere between five and twenty times normal human, with a heavy bias towards the high end of that range; he—or she, let’s be equal-opportunity with our monsters—can probably tip over a minivan like I can a loaded shopping cart and leap small garages in a single bound. Invulnerable to ordinary weapons. What
can
hurt it is a nice question; only one thing cleared the probability threshold—fire—with a bunch more clustered at between twenty-five and thirty percent: the movie standbys of sunlight and a wooden stake, running water, holy symbols or weapons as a general class, some sort of symbolic material like rice or salt, and so on. Does not show up on mirrors; after that photo I think we can take that as proven.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t show on film?”

“The legend started long before there was film. Stands to reason the mirror business had something behind it. Okay, where was I? Shapeshifting. This might have started as a blending of the werewolf and vampire legends, but most are pretty emphatic that vampires can either change shape or make you think they look different than they are. Plus what I saw the other night pretty much convinces me our target can either go invisible or turn into mist. Changes those bitten into others of its kind; that’s how they reproduce.”