“Or you’re lying for him,” Shaw said.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It means what I said.”
“I came here to help you.”
“You came here because a vampire serial killer painted your name on a wall with our men’s blood. You’re here because the bastard mailed you the head of our executioner. I need to know what you did to this guy to make him like you this much.”
“I hunted him, Shaw, and he got away. That’s all.”
“Initially the police in St. Louis said they got him, but you said you missed him. How did you know he wasn’t one of the dead vampires if you’d never seen him before?”
“Because nothing we killed in the condo was powerful enough to do everything he’d done. If Vittorio had been in that condo, more of us would have died.”
“You lost three men, too.”
“Trust me, if Vittorio had been there, it would have been a lot worse.”
“Bad enough to kill three of our men and put the rest in the hospital?” he asked.
“I put in my report that I thought he would resurface again. He’s a serial killer, and being a vampire doesn’t make that big a difference to the pathology. Most serial killers have to keep killing; they can’t, or won’t, stop until they die or are caught.”
“The BTK killer stopped for years,” Shaw said.
“Yeah. Bind, torture, kill-I always hated that moniker. The fact that he was able to channel that murderous impulse into raising kids and being the local monitor for how tall the grass is, is playing hell with a lot of the profilers. Everyone thought he was dead or in jail on some other charge when he stopped. We’re taught that serials can’t stop for twenty years. They can stop for a while, or until the pressure builds up again, but not decades. The fact that he could stop means that others could stop, if they wanted to, or it means that for him it was about control. It only looks like a sexual killing to us, but for him it was about control, and once he had enough control in other parts of his life, he could stop.”
“You sound like you’ve thought about it,” he said.
“Haven’t you? Hasn’t every cop? I mean, the BTK killer has thrown a lot of our traditional theories on these guys into the crapper. It’s like because of this one guy, we know less than we did before about these fruitcakes.”
“You talk like a cop,” he said.
“You sound surprised,” I said.
“I guess I am. Let’s just say I’ve heard some interesting opinions about you.”
“I just bet you have.”
“You don’t sound surprised.”
“I told you on the phone, I’m a girl and I clean up well. That gets the gossip going all on its own. But I’m dating a vampire, and though legally no one can bitch at me, it doesn’t stop the other cops from hating me for it.”
“It’s not dating the vampire, Blake.”
“What is it?”
“It’s moving in with him, or are you going to deny that you moved in with your Master of the City?”
“Why would I deny it?”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You’re not ashamed of it, are you?”
“You should never be ashamed of loving someone, Shaw.”
“You love him, a vampire?”
“They’re legal citizens now, Shaw. They have the right to be loved just like everyone else.”
A look of distaste crossed his face, so strong that it was unpleasant to look at. That look was enough. Vampires were legal, but that didn’t make them good enough to date, or love, in everyone’s book. The sad thing was that a few years ago I’d have agreed with Shaw.
We’d moved me into the Circus to help Jean-Claude’s reputation among the other vampires, but what we hadn’t anticipated was what it would do to my reputation among the cops. I shouldn’t have been surprised, and it shouldn’t have hurt my feelings, but I was and it did.
The door opened, and the good cop to Shaw’s grumpy cop entered, smiling. He had coffee for me, and that made me feel better. Just the smell of it helped brighten my mood.
He’d introduced himself earlier as Detective Morgan, though I suspected he was a little higher rank than a straight-vanilla detective. He had that feel to him of someone in a suit trying to mingle with the common folk, but used to giving orders to everyone else.
Morgan put the coffee in front of me and sat down in the chair that Shaw had vacated. He crossed strong, tanned fingers on the scarred tabletop. His hair was a deep, rich brown, cut short but still too close to his eyes, as if he were overdue for a haircut. I’d put him at about my age, but after an hour of looking at the small lines at his eyes and around his mouth, I’d put him closer to forty than thirty. It was a strong, well-kept forty, but he wasn’t the young, friendly guy he was trying to be. But I bet the act had worked on a lot of interviewees over the years, and probably women outside the job.