find the vampire that started all this. Until night falls and we can question the vampires, we look at what the victims can tell us. I want to see how close the missing-person reports are to each other geographically. I need a map to see if I’m right, but if I am, then it may be where our master vampire is hiding his body. If the missing persons are clustered originally in one area like I’m thinking, then I’d send police up to check on anyone living up in the area. There are always people in the mountains who don’t come to town much if you go far enough up. Some because they’re just good old-fashioned mountain people and antisocial. Or, the new mountain people have money and some of them have helipads at the summit of their mountains, so either way potentially no one would know they’re missing for a while.’
‘You really think we have a lot more people missing?’
‘I’m half-hoping we do, because that will give us someplace to start looking for the master vampire’s body.’
‘You say body like he’s not in it,’ Hatfield said.
‘A vampire that can take over his created offspring this easily usually does leave their body somewhere safe and just uses other bodies as a sort of stalking horse. That body gets damaged, they abandon it like a sinking ship and find another boat to take over.’
‘They jump bodies that easily?’ she asked.
‘I’ve known a couple that could, and I’m thinking worst-case scenario here.’
‘If the bad vamp can jump bodies that easily, how do you kill it?’
Edward and I spoke in unison. ‘Destroy the original body.’
She looked from one to the other of us and almost laughed. ‘You’ve done this before.’
Edward and I looked at each other. Then I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘Yes.’
‘Okay,’ she said, giving us wide eyes, ‘let’s go find that map.’
57
They found a map, and the cluster of pins – red for known victims, green for missing people, yellow for missing people found dead of presumed natural causes – did form a pattern, but not the one I was hoping for. There was a cluster at the beginning in a remote spot in the mountains, but then the next cluster was miles away and less isolated, and the next one closer to one of the small towns in the mountains, and then bypassing it and heading toward Boulder.
The big surprise was that Travers joined us for the planning/briefing session. I’d known that Truth had sucked out the rot, but I’d assumed he’d been more hurt than just the vampire bite. He was bandaged up enough for the dressing to show at the collar of his shirt, and he moved carefully as he leaned against one of the pillars in the room, wincing as he settled his six-feet-plus frame. Everyone had said how glad they were to see him and hadn’t expected him. I’d said hi and good to see him. He’d given me a tiny nod, his face guarded. Last I’d seen, me and my people had saved his ass twice. Something told me he was going to be weird about it. Sigh.
‘How did we not see this?’ Detective Foster asked. He was an older detective who was down to that fringe of hair, and in his glasses he looked more like a high school math teacher than a cop, until you noticed the width of his shoulders and the small muscles that played in his forearms.
‘We didn’t see it, because there’s nothing to see,’ Travers said, in his big, deep voice, all gruff like when he’d been trash-talking me in the mountains. ‘That is every hiker and tourist gone missing for three months. It is not vampire victims.’
‘You guys usually lose that many hikers in a three-month period?’ I asked.
There was a moment of silence, and then Foster said, ‘No, and that’s what I mean about how did we miss it? Even if it wasn’t vampires or some other preternatural, it’s still too many people to lose. Someone should have red-flagged it.’
Captain Jonas stepped up beside the map. ‘This is the first time that all the cases have been put together. Individually it was a bigger number of missing and accidents than normal, but not that much bigger.’
‘It’s the same problem we run into all the time as marshals. Different law enforcement agencies covering different areas mean that you don’t share information unless there’s a reason for it. Different jurisdictions, hell, different ranger stations cover at least two