Midnight Caller Read Free Page A

himself at a nearby inn on Esplanade Avenue, at the edge of Marigny bridging the French Quarter.
    Annabelle was right, he conceded as he unpacked his clothing from his travel bag. If his job hadn’t demanded his return, he wouldn’t be here, save for a family emergency. Trevor thought of the house his sister now inhabited and wondered how she managed to commune in seeming comfort with the ghosts of their shared past. The scars on her wrists proved the ability hadn’t always come so easily.
    He looked around the room, which was clean and affordable enough to be on the FBI’s approved-expenditures list. It had worn dark carpet and a television that sat on the dresser across from the double bed. A single French door led to a balcony overlooking the inn’s courtyard and pool. Trevor walked out onto it and stared into the gently lapping waters below.
    Five females, tied up and tortured, their throats methodically cut. He rubbed his hands over his face, knowing his failure to catch this psychopath had resulted in another death.Special Agent in Charge Johnston, head of the FBI’s Violent Crimes Unit, had assigned Trevor to look into the so-called Vampire Murders occurring in different states as a special VCU project. The protocol had become almost routine: sometimes with or without a partner, Trevor went to the city where a murder fitting the pattern was found, gathered information and worked the case, then passed it on to the local FBI field office in each respective city when the leads ran cold.
    And so far, that was pretty much all he had—cold leads. There had been no witnesses, no DNA match in the ViCAP database, and the widely dispersed locales meant the deaths were considered by local authorities to be isolated cases. Only the VCU had noted a unifying modus operandi, which was why it had gotten involved.
    In the meantime, while Trevor still didn’t know the unsub, the unsub had gotten to know him. The perpetrator had established contact—hand-written notes, souvenirs from kills sent through the mail—so far all of it untraceable and meant to prove the Vampire was far superior to his hunter.
    Unable to shake off his frustration, Trevor went inside and changed into running shorts, a gray T-shirt and tennis shoes. His iPod was on the fritz, so he’d brought a small transistor radio with earphones to accompany him on his regular five-mile run. Trevor picked it up from the dresser, hoping the device could drown out his inner monologue of doubt and self-recrimination. Closing the door to the room behind him, he went down the stairs, stretched in the faint glow of the swimming pool and took off toward the French Quarter. As he ran, he kept a steady pace despite the city’s humidity that lingered well after dark. The music from the radio strapped to his upper arm was the only sound he heard.
    Inside the Quarter, the throngs of tourists had thinned from earlier in the day. But there were still people out on thenarrow streets, many of them with go-cups in their hands as they strolled between the bars and strip clubs in the timeworn buildings. As he turned the corner of Chartres onto Dumaine, Trevor toggled the radio’s dial without breaking his stride. The classic-rock station he’d located at the inn was becoming static filled, the Rolling Stones’s “Sympathy for the Devil” fading in and out of white noise. He skipped over jazz, blues and Cajun zydeco stations that weren’t coming in much better, then stopped dialing when a teenage female voice emerged clearly over the airwaves.
    â€œWho is he to tell me what I can or can’t do with my body? He’s not even my real dad.”
    â€œHow old are you, Shayla?”
    â€œI’m fourteen, almost fifteen.”
    â€œI see.” The other voice was that of a woman, laced with a soft Southern drawl. “What kind of tat did you have in mind?”
    â€œI wanted an ankh, not too big, on my