The Tale of the Body Thief (45 page)

I sat back in the chair, eyes roving the ceiling, trying not to cough
or sneeze or weep or make a fist out of my right hand which I might drive through the tabletop or perhaps the nearby wall. “I loathe cowardice!” I whispered.

“I know,” he said kindly. He studied me for a few quiet moments, and then blotted his lips with his napkin, and reached for his coffee. Then he spoke again. “Assuming that James is still running about in your old body, you are absolutely certain that you want to make the switch back into it—that you
do
want to be Lestat in his old body again.”

I laughed sadly to myself. “How can I make that any plainer?” I asked wearily.
“How
in the hell
can
I make the switch again! That is the question upon which my sanity depends.”

“Well, first we must locate James. We shall devote our entire energy to finding him. We shall not give up until we are convinced that there is no James to be found.”

“Again, you’re making it sound so simple! How can such a thing be done?”

“Shhh, you’re attracting needless attention,” he said with quiet authority. “Drink the orange juice. You need it. I’ll order some more.”

“I don’t need the orange juice and I don’t need any more nursing,” I said. “Are you seriously suggesting that we have a chance of catching this fiend?”

“Lestat, as I told you before—think on the most obvious and unchangeable limitation of your former state. A vampire cannot move about in the day. A vampire is almost entirely helpless in the day. Granted, there is a reflex to reach out for and harm anyone disturbing his rest. But otherwise, he is helpless. And for some eight to twelve hours he must remain in one place. That gives us the traditional advantage, especially since we know so much about the being in question. And all we require is an opportunity to confront the creature, and confuse him sufficiently for the switch to be made.”

“We can force it?”

“Yes, I know that we can. He can be knocked loose from that body long enough for you to get in.”

“David, I must tell you something. In this body I have no psychic power at all. I didn’t have any when I was a mortal boy. I don’t think I can … rise out of this body. I tried once in Georgetown. I couldn’t budge from the flesh.”

“Anyone can do this little trick, Lestat; you were merely afraid.
And some of what you learned in the vampiric body, you now carry with you. Obviously the preternatural cells gave you an advantage, but the mind itself does hot forget. Obviously James took his mental powers from body to body. You must have taken some part of your knowledge with you as well.”

“Well, I was frightened. I’ve been afraid to try since—afraid I’d get out and then couldn’t get back in.”

“I’ll teach you how to rise out of the body. I’ll teach you how to make a concerted assault upon James. And remember, there are two of us, Lestat. You and I together will make the assault. And I do have considerable psychic power, to use the simplest descriptive words for it. There are many things which I can do.”

“David, I shall be your slave for eternity in exchange for this. Anything you wish I will get for you. I shall go to the ends of the earth for you. If only this can be done.”

He hesitated as if he wanted to make some small jesting comment, but then thought the better of it. And went right on.

“We will begin with our lessons as soon as we can. But the more I consider it, I think it’s best I jolt him out of the body. I can do it before he even realizes that you are there. Yes, that must be our game plan. He won’t suspect me when he sees me. I can veil my thoughts from him easily enough. And that’s another thing you must learn, to veil your thoughts.”

“But what if he recognizes you. David, he knows who you are. He remembers you. He spoke of you. What’s to stop him from burning you alive the minute he sees you?”

“The place where the meeting occurs. He won’t risk a little conflagration too near his person. And we shall be sure to ensnare him where he would not dare to show his powers at all. We may have to lure him into position. This requires thinking. And until we know how to find him, well, that part can wait.”

“We approach him in a crowd.”

“Or very near to sunrise, when he cannot risk a fire near his lair.”

“Exactly.”

“Now, let’s try to make a fair assessment of his powers from the information we have in hand.”

He paused as the waiter swooped down upon the table with one of those beautiful heavy silver-plated coffeepots which hotels of quality always possess. They have a patina like no other silver, and always
several tiny little dents. I watched the black brew coming out of the little spout.

Indeed, I realized I was watching quite a few little things as we sat there, anxious and miserable though I was. Merely being with David gave me hope.

David took a hasty sip of the fresh cup as the waiter went away, and then reached into the pocket of his coat. He placed in my hand a little bundle of thin sheets of paper. “These are newspaper stories of the murders. Read them carefully. Tell me anything that comes to your mind.”

The first story, “Vampire Murder in Midtown,” enraged me beyond words. I noted the wanton destruction which David had described. Had to be clumsiness, to smash the furniture so stupidly. And the theft—how silly in the extreme. As for my poor agent, his neck had been broken as he’d been drained of his blood. More clumsiness.

“It’s a wonder he can use the power of flight at all,” I said angrily. “Yet here, he went through the wall on the thirtieth floor.”

“That doesn’t mean he can use the power over really great distances,” David replied.

“But how then did he get from New York to Bal Harbour in one night, and more significantly, why? If he is using commercial aircraft, why go to Bal Harbour instead of Boston? Or Los Angeles, or Paris, for heaven’s sakes. Think of the high stakes for him were he to rob a great museum, an immense bank? Santo Domingo I don’t understand. Even if he has mastered the power of flight, it can’t be easy for him. So why on earth would he go there? Is he merely trying to scatter the kills so that no one will put together all the cases?”

“No,” said David. “If he really wanted secrecy, he wouldn’t operate in this spectacular style. He’s blundering. He’s behaving as if he’s intoxicated!”

“Yes. And it does feel that way in the beginning, truly it does. You’re overcome by the effect of your heightened senses.”

“Is it possible that he is traveling through the air and merely striking wherever the winds carry him?” David asked. “That there is no pattern at all?”

I was considering the question as I read the other reports slowly, frustrated that I could not scan them as I would have done with my vampire eyes. Yes, more clumsiness, more stupidity. Human bodies crushed by “a heavy instrument,” which was of course simply his fist.

“He likes to break glass, doesn’t he?” I said. “He likes to surprise his victims. He must enjoy their fear. He leaves no witnesses. He steals everything of obvious value. And none of it is very valuable at all. How I hate him. And yet … I have done things as terrible myself.”

I remembered the villain’s conversations with me. How I had failed to see through his gentlemanly manner! But David’s early descriptions of him, of his stupidity, and his self-destructiveness, also came back. And his clumsiness, how could I ever forget that?

“No,” I said, finally. “I don’t believe he can cover these distances. You have no idea how terrifying this power of flight can be. It’s twenty times more terrifying than out-of-body travel. All of us loathe it. Even the roar of the wind induces a helplessness, a dangerous abandon, so to speak.”

I paused. We know this flight in our dreams, perhaps because we knew it in some celestial realm beyond this earth before we were ever born. But we can’t conceive of it as earthly creatures, and only I could know how it had damaged and torn my heart and soul.

“Go on, Lestat. I’m listening. I understand.”

I gave a little sigh. “I learnt this power only because I was in the grip of one who was fearless,” I said, “for whom it was nothing. There are those of us who never use this power. No. I can’t believe he’s mastered it. He’s traveling by some other means and then taking to the air only when the prey is near at hand.”

“Yes, that would seem to square with the evidence, if only we knew—”

He was suddenly distracted. An elderly hotel clerk had just appeared in the distant doorway. He came towards us with maddening slowness, a genial kindly man with a large envelope in his hand.

At once David brought a bill out of his pocket, and held it in readiness.

“Fax, sir, just in.”

“Ah, thank you so much.”

He tore open the envelope.

“Ah, here we are. News wire via Miami. A hilltop villa on the island of Curaçao. Probable time early yesterday evening, not discovered till four a.m. Five persons found dead.”

“Curaçao! Where the hell is that?”

“This is even more baffling. Curaçao is a Dutch island—very far south in the Caribbean. Now, that really makes no sense at all.”

We scanned the story together. Once again robbery was apparently the motive. The thief had come crashing through a skylight, and had demolished the contents of two rooms. The entire family had been killed. Indeed, the sheer viciousness of the crime had left the island in the grip of terror. There had been two bloodless corpses, one that of a small child.

“Surely the devil isn’t simply moving south!”

“Even in the Caribbean there are far more interesting places,” said David. “Why, he’s overlooked the entire coast of Central America. Come, I want to get a map. Let’s have a look at this pattern flat out. I spied a little travel agent in the lobby. He’s bound to have some maps for us. We’ll take everything back to your rooms.”

The agent was most obliging, an elderly bald-headed fellow with a soft cultured voice, who groped about in the clutter of his desk for several maps. Curaçao? Yes, he had a brochure or two on the place. Not a very interesting island, as the Caribbean islands go.

“Why do people go there?” I asked.

“Well, in the main they don’t,” he confessed, rubbing the top of his bald head. “Except for the cruise ships, of course. They’ve been stopping there again these last few years. Yes, here.” He placed a little folder in my hand for a small ship called the
Crown of the Seas
, very pretty in the picture, which meandered all through the islands, its final stop Curaçao before it started home.

“Cruise ships!” I whispered, staring at the picture. My eyes moved to the giant posters of ships which lined the office walls. “Why, he had pictures of ships all over his house in Georgetown,” I said. “David, that’s it. He’s on some sort of ship! Don’t you remember what you told me. His father worked for some shipping company. He himself said something about wanting to sail to America aboard a great ship.”

“My God,” David said. “You may be right. New York, Bal Harbour … ” He looked at the agent. “Do cruise ships stop at Bal Harbour?”

“Port Everglades,” said the agent. “Right near it. But not very many start from New York.”

“What about Santo Domingo?” I asked. “Do they stop there?”

“Yes, that’s a regular port all right. They all vary their itineraries. What sort of ship do you have in mind?”

Quickly David jotted down the various points and the nights
upon which the attacks had happened, without an explanation, of course.

But then he looked crestfallen.

“No,” he said, “I can see it’s impossible, myself. What cruise ship could possibly make the journey from Florida all the way to Curaçao in three nights?”

“Well, there is one,” said the agent, “and as a matter of fact, she sailed from New York this last Wednesday night. It’s the flagship of the Cunard Line, the
Queen Elizabeth
2
.”

“That’s it,” I said. “The
Queen Elizabeth
2
. David, it was the very ship he mentioned to me. You said his father—”

“But I thought the
QE
2
makes the transatlantic crossing,” said David.

“Not in winter,” said the agent, agreeably. “She’s in the Caribbean until March. And she’s probably the fastest ship sailing any sea anywhere. She can do twenty-eight knots. But here, we can check the itinerary right now.”

He went into another seemingly hopeless search through the papers on his desk, and at last produced a large handsomely printed brochure, opening it and flattening it with his right hand.

“Yes, left New York Wednesday. She docked at Port Everglades Friday morning, sailed before midnight, then on to Curaçao, where she arrived yesterday morning at five a.m. But she didn’t stop in the Dominican Republic, I’m afraid, can’t help you there.”

“Never mind that, she passed it!” David said. “She passed the Dominican Republic the very next night! Look at the map. That’s it, of course. Oh, the little fool. He all but told you himself, Lestat, with all his mad obsessive chatter! He’s on board the
QE
2
, the ship which mattered so much to his father, the ship upon which the old man spent his life.”

We thanked the agent profusely for the maps and brochures, then headed for the taxis out front.

“Oh, it’s so bloody typical of him!” David said as the car carried us towards my apartment. “Everything is symbolic with this madman. And he himself was fired from the
QE
2
amid scandal and disgrace. I told you this, remember? Oh, you were so right. It’s all a matter of obsession, and the little demon gave you the clue himself.”

“Yes. Oh, definitely yes. And the Talamasca wouldn’t send him to America on the
Queen Elizabeth
2
. He never forgave you for that.”

“I hate him,” David whispered, with a heat that amazed me even given the circumstances in which we were involved.

“But it isn’t really so foolish, David,” I said. “It’s devilishly clever, don’t you see? Yes, he tipped his hand to me in Georgetown, chattering away about it, and we can lay that down to his self-destructiveness, but I don’t think he expected me to figure it out. And frankly, if you hadn’t laid out the news stories for me of the other murders, maybe I never would have thought of it on my own.”