An Apple for the Creature

“Holy shit, are they kidding?” Jackson murmured, as the next PowerPoint slide popped up on the screen. In the image, the vic, who in life had been very beautiful, was lying on her side in a room with ugly beige wallpaper. She was wearing a pink turtleneck sweater and blue jeans, and clutching a copy of Thoreau’s Walden. Fingertips in blue latex had moved the sweater neck away from the vic’s skin, revealing two deep punctures. Next slide: Luminol had been applied to the punctures, and the long-exposure shot revealed the telltale glow of blood, also showing a few droplets on the floor beside her. Only instead of glowing blue, as it should have, the blood was a brilliant purple. “We surmise that when the vampire attacks, it deposits something into the victim’s bloodstream that causes this reaction to the Luminol,” Dr. Alan DeWitt, their forensics instructor, explained in a flat monotone that boggled Claire’s mind. How could anyone sound that detached when they were discussing an attack by an actual bloodsucking vampire?

Until the car had arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, Claire hadn’t known that the Bureau had a Special Forensics Unit located there. Jackson hadn’t, either. The nondescript brick building was situated near a Walgreens. According to some last-ditch, furtive net searching on her non-Bureau smartphone, the Walgreens was not too far from the correct location of Gallows Hill (as opposed to the recreational area that was still listed as the actual site). Nineteen people had been hung for witchcraft on Gallows Hill in 1692. Her first thought had been that maybe their secretive little group was going to do some kind of forensics on the bodies of the victims. Learn historical forensics techniques or something like that.

She sure hadn’t thought they were going to learn how to detect vampire activity.

After being welcomed to the SFU by Mark Nash, the Special Agent in Charge, they’d been sent to a classroom with individual, college-style desks in two rows of six. Claire wondered at all the rush, as if there was some pressing need to learn vampire evidence collection as fast as possible—as if the information would spoil if left out too long, like Ms. Hannover’s goddamn turkey.

Told not to eat or drink anything, Claire and Jackson made sure to sit in the first row, dead center. First impressions were everything.

Dr. DeWitt didn’t spend a lot of time on preamble. All he had said was that the Bureau had conclusive evidence that vampires walked among the living; that there had been three attacks from Boston to Portland, Maine; and that it seemed to be the work of an individual vampire, classified, therefore, as a serial killer. And that they were there to get trained in evidence collection so they could figure out his pattern, apprehend him, and process any additional vampire-related crime scenes that presented themselves. Such evidence collection being referred to as VSI. Vampire Scene Investigations.

A vampire. A goddamn vampire. That was pretty much the consensus of the entire class.

“You owe me fifty bucks,” Claire said to Jackson.

“I think vampires count as aliens,” Jackson retorted.

The PowerPoint kept going. They saw another vic with telltale puncture marks. Another pretty girl. Third vic, cute girl again. Same type of holes, luminous with Luminol. They watched a computer simulation of how the fangs must be shaped, how they would enter the body. The closest analogy was a rattlesnake. Which, bleh.

They discussed the process of exsanguination—having all your blood sucked out of you. Dripping. If you lifted vampire prints, they would glow, too. However, there were no prints found at any of the crime scenes, so Claire raised her hand and asked how they knew that prints glowed. DeWitt told her to hold that excellent question. There were theories as to why so much glowing, but that would also wait for when they got into blood chemistry. As well as profiling the perp, who clearly had a thing for beautiful girls.

They were going to stay on-site, the male agents doubling up. Claire, as the only female, would have a room to herself.

“Now we have a body to examine,” DeWitt announced, as he turned off his projector.

He didn’t say which body. There seemed to be an assortment of them—at least three victims. Claire was eager to see any and all of them.

“Before we do, I want each of you to provide a buccal swab,” he went on.

Claire and Jackson traded frowns. Buccal swabs provided personal DNA. Of course they’d both had extensive physicals, bloodwork, and even drug tests for the FBI, but here, now, requesting a swab rang an alarm bell. She also realized why they hadn’t been allowed to eat or drink anything, and why class had begun that night—so their first swabs would be valid control samples. Still, Claire raised her hand.

“The purpose for this, sir?” she asked.