“Looks like Ellerby,” she said.
“Yes, I believe so. As soon as I get this finger and piece of scalp back to the lab I’ll match them to the cadaver.”
“You think this is where he was killed?”
“Possibly. There was quite a lot of blood in the bushes.”
“And the finger? Cut off or what?”
“Bitten, I think.”
Delaplane grunted. She turned and saw Sheldrake coming over.
He peered in. “The guy from the Chandler House?”
“Yup.”
Sheldrake straightened and looked around at the buildings facing the square. “Christ almighty, you’d think someone would have heard something.”
“Right,” said Delaplane. “Ellerby was alive at eleven, because folks at the hotel said that’s when he went out and didn’t come back. Pretty sure he went out for a smoke. Let’s get some DNA off those cigarette butts, see if this hedge was Ellerby’s habitual smoking spot.” She grinned. “Sheldrake, I’ve got a pain-in-the-ass assignment for your team. You need to interview everyone in those buildings within earshot—say, three hundred yards on either side—about what they heard between eleven and midnight that night.”
“Right. But I wonder: how the hell did Ellerby’s body get from here to the river?”
“Good question. Probably dragged to the street and loaded in a car. We need dogs here, and we need ’em along the riverbank, to see where he was dumped in.”
She heard a commotion at the other end of the crime scene and saw a film crew trying to push their way past the police barriers. She came striding over. It was a big crew, with two cameras—one of them a Steadicam—a sound man, and a couple of others, surrounding a little fat man holding a mic, with a tall, gloomy guy next to him carrying what looked like a big old-fashioned box camera. The videographers were obviously shooting. The tall man was taking weird gadgets out of a suitcase with foam cutouts and laying them on a piece of velvet.
“What’s going on?” Delaplane boomed out.
“I’ve told them, Commander, that this is a crime scene,” said a uniformed officer.
“Hello, I’m Barclay Betts,” said the short round man with the mic, as if she should know who he was. The cameras were still rolling. The name and face were sort of familiar, but Delaplane didn’t give a shit enough to try to remember.
“Well, Mr. Barclay Betts, we’ve got a police barricade here, in case you didn’t notice.”
“We just need to get a little closer,” the round man said. “We’re taking some photographs with this Percipience Camera here. It’s quite remarkable, Officer. You see, it can capture paranormal activity. It could be a great help to the police.”
Delaplane put her fists on her hips and grinned. “Paranormal activity? Like ghosts?”
“In this case, possibly a vampire.”
At this she exploded into laughter. “Oh, yeah? Well, I’ll tell you what. You take one step over that barrier, and I’ll confiscate your vampire camera. Could be a bomb, for all we know. We’ll have to take it apart to find out, and our technicians might, you know, oops!, kind of break it in the process. Or you can just stay where you are and tune in to your vampire vibes from afar.”
The tall man, frowning deeply, put the cover back on the camera and latched it up, while Betts yelled “Cut!” Delaplane could see a young lady behind a camera trying to stifle a laugh.
She walked off, shaking her head. “Vampires!”
12
IT WAS A DOZEN blocks from the Chandler House to the M.E.’s office, and Pendergast had insisted on walking. Humidity or not, Coldmoon didn’t mind. He’d spent a restless night with no more than four hours of sleep. His huge four-poster bed might have been impressive to look at, but it was soft as a marshmallow, and he was more accustomed to sleeping on the bare ground than on a mattress like a ’70s Eldorado. On top of that, he felt like those portraits and creepy black silhouettes hanging on the walls were watching him as he tried to sleep. The walk, and the heat, loosened his muscles and blew away last night’s cobwebs. Best of all, Montgomery Street was a broad commercial avenue, with a quiet cluster of sober-looking buildings ahead that had to be official. No ghoulish mansions, and not a wisp of Spanish moss in sight.
Pendergast strode along beside him, a silent figure in the trademark black suit, his only concession to the sun a pair of tortoiseshell Persol sunglasses with lenses dark as his clothes. If they’d been assigned a vehicle, Coldmoon hadn’t seen any sign of it. He wondered idly if Pickett would get them something, or if Pendergast would take it upon himself to go car shopping again.