“Don’t know yet, but she’s got what appears to be a bite mark on her neck.” Washington pointed to two holes beneath the dead woman’s ear. “And then another, larger and single, here, over the jugular. And another at the carotid.” She glanced up at him, then rezipped the bag.

Bentz straightened. “What’s that mean?”

“Nothin’ good,” she said, her face a knot of worry. “Nothin’ good.”

“Hey!” A shout from the boat.

Bentz braced himself as the helicopters swooped in for a better look. He knew what was coming. The officer on deck yelled over the whomp-whomp-whomp of the copter’s rotors: “Looks like we got another one!”

CHAPTER 26

K risti cut through the water, swimming hard, her strokes even and quick as she tried to figure out a way to break into the inner circle of students she was certain were involved in the vampire cult. She’d even gone online and posted a plea: Searching For Lost Souls. Then, in want-ad fashion on the Internet, she made a request as ABneg1984 to link up with other believers in the reign of the vampire. She didn’t know if she’d have any takers, didn’t even know if her request would make any sense, but she was fishing and she would be interested to find out what she might catch.

Probably nothing but weirdo losers, likely all of them under the age of thirteen.

But the good news was that, so far, she hadn’t seen any video of her apartment on the Internet. She’d searched through MySpace and YouTube and a few other Internet sites and hadn’t found any grainy, dark movies of her and Jay making love. Hopefully that’s the way it would stay. So who had put the camera there? She’d tossed it around in her mind hundreds of times and always came back to Hiram Calloway. Who else could it be? Someone posing as a repairman? She didn’t know but it made her nervous as hell, a fact she kept from Jay as she didn’t want him insisting she should move out.

At the far end of the pool she submerged, pushed off, and started her last lap. All the while she was thinking about her next move and how she was sick and tired of the waiting game she’d been playing. It was time for action, and she planned to start it at the final production of Everyman. Then she intended to have a face to face discussion with Father Mathias. He seemed to be on the fringes of all this somehow. She’d spotted him at Wagner House, coming up from the basement. And he was close with Georgia Clovis, as well as Ariel O’Toole, who had been missing all week.