Blood of the Impaler (44 page)

Rachel shook her head. "We are on the side of God. We cannot lose." Her face was an impassive mask, and only the single tear that ran down her cheek bespoke her emotional turmoil.

"God's side!" Quincy laughed. "God's side! I see, my dear. You are more religious, a better Christian, more beloved of God than I was!" He began to move toward his grandchildren. "How comforting that must be for you!"

Malcolm reached out to hold Quincy back, but the old man pushed him away, sending him thudding against a wall. He kicked open the door and ran out into the corridor, laughing insanely as he shoved a bewildered orderly aside
and made for the stairs. Malcolm and Rachel, followed by a shaking and hesitant Jerry, ran after him.

Quincy seemed almost to fly down the stairs. He was through the main entrance of the hospital before his three pursuers had reached the bottom of the stairwell. Malcolm rushed out onto the street, tensed and ready for a continued chase, but as he looked up and down Queens Boulevard, east and west, he could find no sign of his grandfather. Malcolm did not know whether Quincy had used his inhuman speed to run so fast or used his vampiric powers to disappear into mist or change his shape and flee as an animal. In any event, he was gone.

Malcolm, Rachel, and Jerry stood silent and motionless upon the dark early-morning sidewalk. In a very few moments they heard the sound of a police siren.

D
etective Mario De La Vega sat pensively behind his desk at the 110th Precinct police station, tapping his pen softly on the desktop, staring at the three people who sat in front of him on the hard wooden chairs. At last he sighed and said, "Well, I really don't quite know what to say to all this, folks."

"It's just like we described it to you, Officer," Malcolm said, "and we can't explain it any better than you can."

"Honest to God," Jerry agreed. "That's what happened." Rachel said nothing.

De La Vega nodded, not in agreement or approval but merely as an acknowledgment of what had been said. "I've seen people do all sorts of crazy things when they're on the brink of death," he said. "I could understand it if all that happened here was that your grandfather got up and ran out of the hospital. It's awfully hard to imagine a dying man in his nineties doing something like that, let alone outrunning you"—and he looked at Malcolm—"but stranger things have happened." He tossed his pen down and shook his head as he brushed his mustache away from his lip with the back of his left forefinger. "But there has to be some other explanation of what happened to the clergyman. It's hard to believe that your grandfather could have killed him at all, but when the coroner tells me that the cause of death was exsanguinations . . ." He shook his head again.

"We can't change the facts, Detective," Rachel said,
adding in her thoughts, and we don't have to tell them all to you either.

"And no one else entered or left the room, other than the three of you, your grandfather, and Father Henley?" De La Vega asked for the tenth time.

"No one," Malcolm said, "except the doctor an hour or so before."

"And you have no idea what that piece of wood was doing in there, or why the coroner found splinters in the priest's hand?" They all shook their heads, and De La Vega sighed again. "Listen to me very carefully. We're not in court right now, and we aren't talking about perjury or anything, but providing the police with false information is a serious crime. If you—"

"We are not lying to you, Detective," Rachel said, attempting to project offended hauteur at his suggestion of
deceit, and feeling guilty for the fact that they were indeed deceiving him by leaving certain truths unspoken. "Everything
we have told you is true. Our grandfather got up from the bed, and attacked us. He bit Father Henley, escaped from the room, and by the time we got downstairs, he was nowhere to be found."

De La Vega nodded again, but his pursed lips and narrowing eyes told them that he was growing angry. "I want you to try to listen to yourselves, try to understand what this all sounds like to me, to someone else just hearing it from you. You tell me that your grandfather, a man in his late nineties, drinks the blood of a priest and leaves him dead on the floor. He runs out of the hospital—
runs
out
,
mind you, a man who was in the hospital to die, in all likelihood—and disappears. We find what looks to us like a wooden stake in the room with the body, with evidence that the priest was holding the stake before he was killed." He paused and allowed his eyes to drift from one of the faces before him to the others. "Do you understand what I'm saying here? I mean, do you think that I or anyone else on the force is
stupid enough to believe this? Do you think that I intend to file a report that states this horror story of yours is factual?" He leaned forward and his voice became stern and demanding. "Now, one last time: What the hell happened last night?"

"Are we under arrest, Detective?" Rachel asked.

"No." The policeman shook his head. "Not yet, at least. But I want some answers to—"

"Then I would think that we are free to leave," she interrupted him. "If not, then perhaps we had better call our attorney, Peter Gierer. Perhaps you've heard of him?"

De La Vega frowned at the question. He had, of course, heard of the high-priced lawyer whose services were available to so many of the wealthy families in New York City. Gierer was no featherweight, and De La Vega had no desire to have to deal with Gierer and his battery of lawyers until and unless it was absolutely necessary. "You are free to leave, of course," he said carefully, "though I would have to ask you all to hold yourselves available for further questioning, until this matter is settled."

"Like in the movies," Jerry muttered.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Don't leave town," he said.

"Our grandfather ran off at about four in the morning," Rachel commented, ignoring Jerry. "We have been here talking to you and other officers since five. It is now ten o'clock, and I for one would like to get some sleep, if it's all the same to you." Her voice was infuriatingly imperious.

"And if it's all the same to you," De La Vega said heatedly, "I would like to get a few believable answers to a few simple—" The ringing of the telephone on his desk interrupted his sentence, and as he picked it up and spoke to the caller, Rachel looked over at Malcolm. Only one who knew her as well as he did could have detected the nervous concern which was hiding just behind the cool, impassive expression. Malcolm winked at her, and she gave him a very slight, very sad smile.

De La Vega replaced the phone and then said, "Well, your grandfather has been found."

"He's been found!" Rachel exclaimed. "What do you mean he's been found?"
It's daytime
, she thought.
He couldn't be out in the sunlight, it's impossible!
"You mean that he's alive?"

"No, I'm sorry, I didn't say that," the detective added quickly. "I should have said that his body has been found. I'm afraid that one of you will have to come with me to the morgue and identify him. It's a legal formality. There's no doubt that it's your grandfather."

"Where was he found?" Malcolm asked.

De La Vega looked at him hard, ready to observe and
gauge his reaction. "Another priest at Father Henley's church found him a little while ago."

"At our church?" Rachel asked, astonished. "He was in a
church
?"

"Not in the church, no. The priest, Father Lang-something . . ."

"Father Langstone," Malcolm muttered,

"Yes, Langstone. He found your grandfather's body in the church's cemetery. Apparently he was trying to dig down into the ground when he died."

There was no need for Malcolm, Rachel, and Jerry to compare interpretations of this, for each realized what had happened. After old Quincy escaped from the hospital, he had gone to the graveyard, attempting to gain entrance into the burial ground before the sun rose. He must have been too late. As soon as the dawn broke, the sunlight had rendered him helpless, and so he had been found. Like all the members of his breed, he needed to be buried in sanctified earth. Malcolm recalled Van Helsing's words: In soil barren of holy memories, the vampire cannot rest. This was the reason the satanic creatures returned daily to hallowed ground for their deathlike sleep.

"I'll take you over there, whichever of you wants to make the identification," De La Vega said.

"We'll all go," Rachel replied quickly, then turned to her brother. "But if you don't mind, I'll let you identify him, Malcolm. I . . ." She paused and seemed to bite her lip slightly. "I'd rather not have to see him."

"Me either," Jerry muttered, more to himself than to anyone else.

"There is going to have to be an autopsy, I'm afraid," De La Vega said, rising from behind his desk. "In fact, that call was from an officer at the one hundred and twelfth, and he told me that the medical examiner put your grandfather on the top of the list, because of the homicide involved here. Father Henley, I mean." He glanced at his watch. "We should be able to get to the morgue just about as they're finishing with him." He looked at Rachel and Malcolm for a moment. "Look, there are a lot of unanswered questions about this whole thing, but that doesn't stop me from sympathizing with you over your loss. I'm very sorry."

"Thank you, Detective," Rachel said as she got to her feet. She, Malcolm, and Jerry followed De La Vega out of the
police station and sat in silence in the unmarked police car as he drove them to the morgue. Malcolm sat in the back with his sister, and Jerry sat in front beside the policeman, who made a few halfhearted attempts at conversation.

They drove to the Grand Central Parkway and cruised along it until they reached the Parsons Boulevard exit. A few hundred yards along the service road brought them to the turn that took them to the Queens Hospital Center, a large, sprawling complex of buildings at the rear of which was the county morgue. De La Vega pulled to a stop at the side of the old red-brick building, turned off the ignition, and left the car. Malcolm followed him, and together they entered the morgue. Like so many of the municipal buildings in New York City, this one was old and impersonal, dingy and poorly lighted, sorely in need of fresh paint and new flooring. The high, yellowed ceilings echoed sounds with hollow tones, and Malcolm felt depression descending upon him, overwhelming his fear and regret.

He listened as De La Vega told the desk clerk why they were there, and Malcolm wordlessly signed the forms that were thrust in front of him. The preliminary death certificate listed heart failure as the cause of death, an analysis that would probably have been quite accurate if his grandfather had been truly dead.

De La Vega led him into a small, dark, dirty room that was designated VIEWING ROOM AND CHAPEL by a black sign with white lettering on the door. Nothing about the room reminded Malcolm of a chapel. There was a square wooden table and a few chairs in one corner and dilapidated sofa against the opposite wall. At the center of the rear wall was a large rectangular window some five feet long by four feet high, covered with a heavy white vinyl curtain. The attendant left Malcolm and De La Vega alone for a moment to wait in uneasy silence. He returned a few moments later and without preamble or preparation pulled back the white curtain. Malcolm moved forward and looked through the window.

Quincy Harker's body lay upon a narrow, wheeled table. Only his face was visible. A white sheet covered his body from the chin down, and a smaller white cloth had been draped over his head from just above his eyebrows back, tucked in to cover the sides of his head. Malcolm understood why, of course. The autopsy had already been performed by the medical examiners. His grandfather's head had been
sawed open, his chest had been slit, his internal organs removed and weighed, tissue samples taken, chemical tests performed. He had then been put back together and sewn up, but respect for the feelings of the bereaved and a concern for their emotional state led the officials to hide the incisions. For purposes of identification, the face was generally enough.

Malcolm stared at Quincy's pale, white, motionless face. He could read the emotions etched into the ancient features. Rage and desperation had been frozen onto his features as the first rays of the morning sun had struck his undead corpse.

"Is that him?" the attendant asked softly. Malcolm nodded, then turned away as the white curtain was dropped to cover the window.

He walked quietly out of the room and left the building, the detective following close behind him. Rachel and Jerry were standing beside the car, waiting for him, and as he approached, Rachel asked, "Are you all right, Malcolm?"

"Yes, I'm okay," he replied, wiping his brow. He turned to Detective De La Vega and asked, "What do we do now?"

"Well," he said, "you'll have to make arrangements for burial, get in touch with a funeral home. They'll come and pick up the body. From that point on, you just work out a funeral schedule with them."

"Arrangements have already been made," Rachel said.