Bloodless

13

Wendy Gannon, director of photography, stood back slightly from the rest of the crew, monitoring their camera feeds, watching the FBI agent talk. This was an unexpected find — they’d been planning to beard the M.E., George McSomebodyorother, in his den. If she’d expected a premature encounter like this, she would have been on the lead camera herself. But she knew Craig could be trusted to get good footage, without a lot of amateurish panning and zooming. She looked at the sky, looked back at Betts and the FBI agent, mentally framing the shot. That black suit might throw off the white balance, and she murmured a few directions into her headset. Craig gave her a thumbs-up and zeroed in on the agent.

“Can you tell us what your investigations have uncovered so far?” Betts asked in his most ingratiating tone — the one he reserved for movie stars and high-ranking officials.

“Certainly,” the agent said. What was his name? Prendergrast? Gannon glanced at Marty, the production assistant, asking him through the headset to get all available background on this person, ASAP — to make sure they weren’t being pranked into interviewing someone masquerading as someone else. This guy looked about as far from an FBI agent as possible, but then she didn’t really know much about the FBI. With the undertaker’s garb, he was a strange-looking fellow, and unusually cooperative for law enforcement. But his ID had looked real enough. The younger, athletic man standing next to him, on the other hand, could have been a statue stamped right out of the Quantico mill.

She glanced around, making sure her people kept the other media away until Betts got what he wanted. He was a shrewd interviewer and could be relied on to do that quickly. Pavel was shooting B-roll with the Steadicam — simultaneously, not afterward as per usual, since this interview was unscripted — and that would give her any necessary elbow room when it came to editing the footage. She checked with the sound assistant, satisfied herself with the audio levels, then looked skyward again. The light was a little hot, but that was all right. This particular interview wasn’t about mood, she knew — it was about content.

She turned her attention back to the interview already under way.

Strange — Betts, interrogator first class, didn’t seem to have made any progress. “So what then, exactly, have you uncovered?”

“Nothing.” The man spoke with a genteel southern lilt that, Gannon thought, would fit in perfectly with the Georgia locale.

Betts looked perplexed. “You haven’t uncovered anything?”

“No.”

“But there has been a murder, correct?”

“Certainly,” the agent said, in the most agreeable manner imaginable. “Two, in fact.”

“I’m sorry,” Betts said. “If you’re sure it was murder, then how can you not have uncovered anything?”

“The body was not covered — except by the clothes, of course, which were rather a mess. I don’t know where you got the impression it was covered.”

“But... that isn’t...” Betts paused, uncharacteristically flummoxed. He took a deep breath. “Let’s try this again.” He glanced at the lead camera, as if to slap an invisible clapperboard for a fresh take. “Why has the FBI been called in?”

“Called in for what?”

“The murders.”

“Which murders?”

“The ones that just took place.”

“Do you mean, took place here?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Here in Savannah?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

A pause. “The murders in which the blood was sucked from the bodies, as if by a vampire. Those murders, sir!”

“I ask because more than one murder has taken place in Savannah recently. I’m delighted to help you, but I can’t answer a question that’s insufficiently articulated.”

This was said in a tone of mild reproach, like that of a disappointed elementary school teacher speaking to a favorite student. Gannon saw a hint of red appear on the back of Betts’s neck, just above his tailored silk shirt.

“Now that we’ve established which murders,” Betts said, his voice raised, “what can you tell me about them?”

“Which one?”

“Let’s start with the first murder,” Betts said, after a pause to compose himself.

“The first murder?” the FBI agent repeated, in a remarkable parroting of Betts’s own deep, nasal voice. “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t really be of much help there. I’m so sorry.”

“Why not?” Betts asked tersely.

“Because I haven’t seen the first body. That’s why I’m here. I don’t mean in Savannah, you understand. I mean this building.”

A slightly strangled noise escaped Betts’s lips. “Okay. What can you tell me about the second murder?”

“It was a man.”

“So we’ve been told.”

“He’s dead. I can verify that much for you, having examined that body. As I believe I implied already.”

“Can you be more specific? How was the blood sucked out?”

“From the man?”

“Yes, yes. From the man!” Gannon could see Betts was losing his legendary temper.

“Well, the body was not covered. Going back to your earlier inquiry, that is.”

Betts waited impatiently for more.

“I confess, Mr. — Butts, was it?”

“Betts.”

“Ah. Forgive me. I confess, Mr. Butts, but I’m not sure precisely what additional information will satisfy you. The victim is a male. His body was found yesterday. The cause of death has yet to be determined. Surely that should be enough to satisfy a member of your... profession?” And here Pendergast glanced — not, Gannon noticed, in a friendly way — over the entourage.

“It’s not satisfactory,” Betts said. “Why is the FBI involved?”

Pendergast’s wandering eye returned to the director and he waved a hand at the cameras, mics, and other equipment. “The FBI often investigates homicides. Are you representing some local, or more likely hyperlocal, news channel?”

Betts’s exasperated sigh was loud enough to spike the needles on the sound equipment. “I’m making — directing — a documentary. ‘Demon-Haunted Savannah.’ Now, Mr. Pendergast, some are saying this is the work of the Savannah Vampire. Do you have any comment on that?”

“Why do you ask?”

“As an FBI agent — if in fact you are an agent — you should know that what we need are details. People are frightened; they need answers. They have the right to know the truth.”

Gannon felt this sanctimonious retort would anger the agent, and she braced herself. But if anything, it did just the opposite. The man’s face assumed a thoughtful, almost philosophical expression. And when he spoke again it was once more in the most cooperative of tones.

“Mr. Butts,” he said in his honeyed voice, “whether or not you realize it, you’ve just hit on the crux of the matter. ‘“What is truth?” said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.’ If I knew exactly which truth you were searching for, I would do my best to help. But it seems that — forgive my bluntness — no answer I provide you with is satisfactory. In fact, every statement I make, every truth I impart, is simply met with another question. I appeal to my fellow agent, and the members of your own gathering, in this. Despite my best intentions in speaking with you, I find myself auribus teneo lupum, as Terence wrote in his imperishable and inimitable Phormio. Have you read Phormio? No? Well, I fear that is all too frequently the case today. Nevertheless, despite your lack of culture — particularly sad in a man who calls himself a journalist — as a servant of the public I’m still willing to stand on these steps, hic manebimus optime, until I’ve made it clear to you that I—”

At this point, Gannon saw the lights in the office behind the two agents go on, and a woman in a uniform come forward and unlock the front door. She glanced at her watch: nine o’clock.

Instantly, the man named Pendergast turned and — with a bound as quick as a fox — leapt up to the now-unlocked door and slipped inside. The other FBI agent followed.

Betts wheeled toward the cameras. “Cut! Cut!” he yelled. “I don’t want any of that shit on tape!” He looked at Gannon. “Move, damn it, we need to get in there and talk to that medical examiner. Now!”

He jogged forward, climbing the stairs Pendergast had stood on just moments before, grasped the door, and tried to yank it open. But Agent Pendergast had turned and now held the door shut as if with a rod of iron.

“I’ve enjoyed the persiflage, Mr. Butts,” he said through the glass, a thin smile on his lips. “But I’m afraid I have an appointment with the M.E. in” — he glanced at his watch — “sixty seconds. And members of the press—however broad the interpretation — are not invited.” Then he gestured to the woman in uniform, who smartly relocked the door.

Beyond the glass of the door, Gannon could see the three figures receding into the office. There was a strange, almost electric moment of silence among the assembly surrounding the steps. And then Betts, outraged and outmaneuvered, began to curse until his voice filled the plaza, echoing off the buildings and pegging the sound engineer’s VU meters fully in the red.