“I worked it out. I’m officially in the field.” Jay had put in over forty hours in the crime lab this week and Inez Santiago had taken over for him. Inez had been insistent that he leave when she’d arrived and had assured him that she, Bonita Washington, and the other criminologists on staff could handle anything that came up.

Jay hadn’t needed any more encouragement. Not after finding bodies drained of blood, their necks showing evidence of bite marks measuring the size of an adult male human, the puncture wounds consistent with razor-sharp cuspids. Bruising on the necks of all four victims was identical and the hope was that the police could match the mark on the victims’ skin with the killer’s teeth.

The work of someone trying desperately to make them believe that there were blood-sucking creatures of the night attacking girls at All Saints.

Jay’s hand clenched over the wheel and he braked to avoid rear-ending a motorcycle that had cut into his lane. He said to Bentz, “You know that Kristi was in a class on vampires in society or some such crap.” Checking his side view and switching lanes, he tromped on the gas and sped around a sedan driven by an old guy in a hat.

“Yeah?”

“I think someone’s taken this vampire thing to another level.” Quickly, he explained to Bentz about Lucretia tipping Kristi off about a campus cult, and how he and Kristi had found a vial of blood in Kristi’s apartment—Tara Atwater’s previous home. While Bentz listened silently, Jay explained about discovering the video camera and setting a trap. He added that Kristi was convinced Father Mathias, the priest who staged the morality plays, was somehow involved in the coeds’ disappearances. Jay finished with, “Kristi believes that Wagner House is at the heart of the cult.”

“Someone might have told me,” Bentz stated grimly.

Jay didn’t respond. Let Kristi’s father make of it what he would.

“And you left her there?” Bentz charged quietly.

“My mistake.”

“You bet it was.”

Jay let it go. The exit sign for Baton Rouge caught in his headlights just as the first drops of rain pelted his windshield. He accelerated onto the ramp and decided he’d been the brunt of Bentz’s rage long enough. “So where are you?”

“A half hour from Baton Rouge. With Montoya.”

“Good. I’m already there. I’m going directly to Kristi’s apartment. I’ll call you when I get there.”

Pushing the speed limit, Jay cut through town, past neighborhoods that had become familiar since the first of the year. But all the while he was driving by rote, spurred on by images of the drained, bloodless corpses dragged out of the Mississippi.

His hope was that the killer had kept them alive for a long time before taking their lives. The delayed decomposition suggested as much.

Unless they’d been frozen.