Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 134, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 817 & 818, September/October 2009

City in Fog by John Morgan Wilson

John Morgan Wilson throws a spooky twist into our Halloween issue this year with his special take on the genre of vampire fiction. He is also the author of the Edgar Award-winning Benjamin Justice series. The eighth Justice novel, Spider Season, was published in December, 2008. The Mystery Scene review raved: “This exquisite novel is the finest yet in a powerful series.” Bold Strokes Books recently reissued the first four Justice mysteries, including Simple Justice, the 1996 Edgar winner.

The first body turned up in early February beside a Dumpster in a dead-end alley in the Tenderloin.

Nothing too unusual in that. The Tenderloin is San Francisco’s seediest district, a magnet for the city’s more troublesome creatures of the night. Homicides are almost as common there as jumpers from the Golden Gate Bridge.

What was different about this one was the condition of the corpse. A city worker discovered it just after dawn, crumpled against a graffiti-scarred wall in a shaft of early sunlight. When my partner and I arrived, we found a victim without pulse or heartbeat, and unusually pallid. We immediately noticed bruising on the neck, signs of possible strangulation. Upon closer inspection, we saw that a carotid artery in the neck appeared torn and collapsed, possibly from sustained suction. There was no sign of spilled blood anywhere, as if the suspect had been careful not to waste a drop.

“The Chronicle will have a field day with this one,” my partner said, as we picked through litter for possible evidence, while the coroner’s people handled the body. “I can see the headline now: Vampire Killer Stalks City.” With a wink, he added, “Whoever did this won’t be getting a booster award from the tourism bureau.”

My partner was Inspector Jack Riordan, a beefy, balding detective who’d been my kindly mentor over the past few years. My name is Alice Martell. At thirty-seven, I was the junior partner on our robbery-homicide team, a few years up from patrol and a year out of a childless marriage that shouldn’t have lasted as long as it did.

Upon arrival at the crime scene, we’d identified the victim at a glance, because his face was only too familiar.

“At least it wasn’t a tourist,” I said, in the hard-edged manner I’d developed like a callus since my divorce. “I don’t expect too many tears to be shed over this one.”

“You just get colder and tougher, don’t you, Martell?” Jack winked, grinning impishly. “Maybe it’s time you started dating again. Rediscover that sunny side that we all used to know and love.”

“Thanks for the advice, Jack, but I’d rather spend my time finding out who did a Bela Lugosi number on our victim here. Even if he is a scumbag who deserved what he got.”

The scumbag was an ex-con named Bobby Tremaine. A few days earlier, he’d beaten a rape charge on a technicality, enraging the judge and spectators when he’d blown a kiss to his victim on his way out of court. It had made the evening news, giving Tremaine his fifteen minutes of fame and the victim and her family an extra measure of grief. So no one at the SFPD was going to be heartbroken because Bobby Tremaine was no longer among the living.

“We’ll have to look at the girl’s family for suspects,” Jack said, sounding regretful. “Possible revenge killing — obvious place to start.”

“That doesn’t explain the odd wound on the neck, or the apparent loss of blood.”

“Could be a ploy to confuse us, throw us off the scent.”

“That’s a stretch,” I said.

He grinned. “Okay, the usual explanation then. A vampire did it.”

“Sorry, Jack. I don’t believe in vampires.”

Neither of us did, of course. But we also knew that a compulsion for blood-letting among individuals or cults was well-documented, either as an erotic fetish or a criminal pathology connected to murder. The medical facts in our case clearly pointed in that direction. The coroner estimated that Tremaine had lost nearly three pints of blood from the gash in his neck. Traces of human saliva were found around the puncture site. Strangulation had put out Bobby Tremaine’s lights but he’d died from plummeting blood pressure because someone had used him as a human blood bank.

One such homicide was trouble enough. Then, later that month, another victim in similar condition was discovered near the ocean, in the swampy remnants of the old Sutro Baths. A few days later, victim number three turned up in Nob Hill, not far from the Grace Cathedral. Because they were obviously linked to the first, Jack Riordan and I caught those cases too. Naturally, the grisly murders got front-page headlines in the Chron and sent the cable gab shows into a feeding frenzy.

“I guess my kids won’t be seeing me for a while,” Jack said, as we studied the coroner’s report on the third victim. “At least our suspect waited until after Christmas.”

“You can thank him when we put the bracelets on him,” I said.

Jack’s eyes shifted uneasily, without their usual glint of humor. “If we catch him,” he said. “Let’s not forget the Zodiac. Not every serial killer gets caught.”

We compared notes as we began building our file: Like Bobby Tremaine, the second and third victims had been strangled into unconsciousness before their throats had been gouged and their blood drained. Each murder had occurred shortly before sunrise, when a predator with a taste for blood could find an ample supply among the countless derelicts and predators who prowled San Francisco in the wee small hours.

Our commander assembled a special task force to investigate, putting Jack and me in charge. Jack was understandably disheartened by the added pressure and responsibility. Pushing fifty and nearing retirement, he had three kids and a second marriage he was trying to hold together by spending more time at home. Me, I welcomed the heavier workload. As far as I was concerned, a demented vampire wannabe stalking San Francisco’s streets was a useful distraction from the emptiness of my little apartment up in Potrero Heights. My closest friends were all cops, but everyone was either married or dating long-term. Hanging out with couples only reminded me how single I was, so I’d stopped. Other than Jack, I no longer had anyone in my life who meant much.

What I had was my job. So I embraced our investigation with a vengeance, only too willing to lose myself in it, seeking refuge from the ache of loneliness I was too proud and too stubborn to acknowledge.

I first encountered Eduardo Arce in early March, a few days before the fourth body was found.

We literally bumped into each other as he stepped around a corner in a drift of fog near the wharf, not long after sundown. I’d been checking leads that afternoon in Chinatown and the Anchorage, and was late for a task-force meeting back at the Hall of Justice. My eyes were on my watch, my mind on the case. When I looked up, Eduardo and I were suddenly face to face.

If you have to collide with a stranger on the street, I thought, it might as well be a guy like Eduardo Arce. I put his age at forty, give or take a year. He was tall and lean, with dark, wavy hair, a nice face, and a beguiling soul patch beneath his lower lip. His attire looked hand-tailored but on the comfortable side: fine-looking dark slacks, a loose-fitting silk shirt, a gray fedora, and long black coat to ward off the evening chill. I was blond, blue-eyed, and not bad-looking — Jack Riordan let me know that from time to time, in a brotherly way — but not remotely in the league of a suave looker like Eduardo Arce.

After our collision, he held me by the shoulders a moment to steady me, studying my face with his soulful dark eyes.

“You seem to be in a hurry.”

His voice was deep and warm, his accent faintly South American.

“Working,” I said. “I’m a cop.”

That’s usually enough to discourage a man on the make. But Eduardo seemed to perk up when I mentioned my occupation. He glanced at my left hand as I drew back, almost surely searching for a wedding ring.

“Divorced,” I said tightly, and started to step around him.

“Even a police officer needs to slow down now and then,” he said, “and get her mind off the job. Especially a police officer.”

His tone was gentle and understanding, his smile reassuring. Since the split with my ex, I hadn’t spent any significant time with a man except Jack, and that had been strictly work-related. I didn’t want the complication of another relationship, the deceptions, the tensions, the pain and ugly words when it ended. I was better off solo, keeping it simple. At least, that’s what I’d been telling myself for the past year.

Eduardo handed me a business card.

“I teach the tango, just a few blocks away, in North Beach. I’m a recent arrival to your fine city, and accepting new students.”

Part of me wanted to be gone, away from his empathetic nature and seductive charm. But something held me back.

“I’m afraid I have two left feet,” I said, but without much conviction.

“For you, a free lesson.” His smile was like salve. He extended his hand. It was surprisingly soft, the fingers long and slender. “Eduardo Arce, formerly of Argentina.”

“Alice Martell,” I said, smiling more easily, “late for a meeting at headquarters.”

He held my hand a moment longer, along with my gaze, then turned and strolled away into the fog. I slipped his business card into my handbag, remembering his touch.

The fourth body was found in a run-down section of the Mission district favored by drunks and drug addicts. The characteristics of the crime duplicated the others: a victim targeted after dark, strangulation, punctured neck, drained blood, the corpse left exposed to the emerging sunlight as if its placement there had been intentional.

As we checked the backgrounds of the victims, we also came across another commonality: Each was a dirtbag who’d gotten away with murder, or a crime nearly as serious. Mishandled evidence, a key witness who changes his or her story, a holdout juror, a judge who’s a patsy — there are all kinds of ways a guilty perp can beat the rap in an imperfect justice system that favors reasonable doubt. The four victims of the Vampire Killer, as the media had dubbed him, ran the gamut.

“Too many to be coincidental,” Jack said. “Definitely a pattern, almost certainly a motive”

“Vigilante justice.”

He nodded wearily. “So now we’ve got two angles we have to work: the vigilante aspect, and the vampire business. Not your standard-issue psycho.”

Jack looked wrung-out and exhausted from the long hours we’d been putting in and even I was starting to fray at the edges. The pressure on the task force was mounting from City Hall, especially with the arrival of spring when so many tourists would be picking a destination as they made their summer travel plans. I was sleeping only a few hours a night, on the nights I could keep my eyes closed. Awake, when I wasn’t chasing leads or going back over the evidence, I was reading up on vampirism. Not the mythical Count Dracula kind, in which the undead spend eternity in spooky Transylvanian castles, sleeping in coffins to avoid deadly sunlight or perishing with a wooden stake through the heart. I wasn’t interested in nonsense like that.

I was more interested in things like dissociative identity disorder and multiphasic personality disorder, the kind of terms applied to psychotics who truly believe they need human blood to survive, or simply crave it. “Serial Murderers in Germany from 1945 to 1995: A Descriptive Study,” from the journal Homicide Studies, was particularly helpful. So was I Have Lived in the Monster: Inside the Minds of the World’s Most Notorious Serial Killers, by former FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler. They left no doubt that vampires — or at least those who were so self-identified — did indeed walk among us. Many of these mentally-ill individuals were loners and transients living on the fringes of society, which often made apprehending them difficult. Like every major city, San Francisco was teeming with people like that.

Residents were justifiably frightened, and potential visitors were staying away. Business was down across the city, particularly after dark and especially on the nights when one of San Francisco’s famous fogs rolled in from the bay, settling over the streets like a shroud and turning them into ideal hunting grounds for someone with an unquenchable thirst for blood.

We needed to break the case, and soon.

In mid March, victim number five.

A woman jogger discovered the body shortly after daybreak in a Golden Gate Park playground the victim was known to frequent. This time, he was an ex-priest who’d molested children but avoided punishment because the statute of limitations had run out.

“The count rises,” Jack said, trying to lighten things up as he tacked a photo of the fifth victim on the task-force bulletin board. “No pun neglected.”

But he wasn’t laughing, and neither was I.

Late that night, long after he’d gone home to his family, I stepped from the Hall of Justice into a sharp wind that felt like it cut right through me. Minutes later, sitting in my car with the ignition running and the heater on, I still felt cold inside. At that moment, returning to an empty apartment seemed unbearable. I’d run out of ways to fool myself into believing I could tough it out. Loneliness can kill just like a homicidal maniac, I finally admitted. It just does it more slowly.

That’s when I remembered the business card in my handbag, and used it to call Eduardo Arce.

Eduardo led his tango sessions from eight p.m. until midnight in a second-floor space on a somewhat desolate stretch of Broadway.

As I entered, he was dancing with an attractive older woman under subdued light in the middle of a checkerboard floor. The music I heard was a seductive blend of Cuban, African, and Spanish — hot-blooded and melodramatic, sweet and melancholy, all at once. His partner’s eyes were closed as he transported her around the floor with passion and precision, gliding gracefully to the hypnotic rhythm as if nothing existed but the dance. Once, as he lifted her leg to a beat in the music, his eyes fell on mine. He never broke his concentration, never lost the perfect balance required of the movements. Yet I knew that he recognized me, and was pleased. Just as the tango communicates wordlessly, Eduardo’s dark eyes spoke volumes.

Later, when we were alone, he took my hand and led me onto the floor, walking with manly elegance until we reached the center.

“Really,” I said, “I’m no good at this.”

Gently, he touched my lips with his finger, forbidding me to speak. Within minutes, I’d learned my first step — he called it a “figure” — and by midnight, closing time, I was lost in the mesmerizing motion. We spoke few words. The music and the figures became our language, and that room our world. It was just the two of us, and the tango.

Over the next few weeks, as the Vampire Killer added another victim to his list, I left work each night to dance with Eduardo Arce. Most of our sessions took place in the hours after midnight, when the other tangueros had gone. From Eduardo, I learned the proper Argentine term for the tango ritual — milonga — and the name of the box-shaped accordion that gives the music its bittersweet sound: the bandoneon. But mostly we just danced, in a style that gradually grew more sensual and expressive.

“With the tango, strangers can speak to each other,” he told me, “with a mere rotation of the ankle, or a sudden dip.”

After a month of dancing, we were no longer strangers. I knew I was falling in love with him, and suspected that he had similar feelings for me. But when I asked him if we might have brunch together one Sunday morning, our relationship suddenly stalled.

“Our courtship must remain here,” he said, “within the boundaries of this dance floor. Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

Of course, I forgave him. How could I not? He’d already given me so much solace, when I’d needed it so desperately. Yet I wanted him more than ever, and sensed that he needed me as much.

That night, before we parted, he held me tighter than usual, whispering my name as if he were in pain.

“Alice.”

His lips brushed my neck and I felt him tremble, almost violently.

“Maybe he’s married,” Jack said, steering me down a corridor on the fourth floor of the Hall of Justice to a hastily called task-force meeting, just as I returned from picking up two orders of Chinese takeout.

“I suppose that’s possible,” I conceded. “But why wouldn’t he just tell me? It’s not like he’s trying to sleep with me.”

“Maybe he’s gay — closet case, confused about what he really feels.”

“Maybe,” I said, unconvinced.

“Anyway,” Jack said, “you seem lighter, happier. More like the Alice I used to know.” His eyes twinkled. “I see you’ve changed your hairstyle. Nice.” I blushed, but conceded the point with a shrug. “This guy Eduardo must be good for you,” Jack went on. “Don’t let him get away without a fight.”

“Believe me, I don’t intend to.”

We turned into the command-center room, joining a dozen other inspectors and several FBI agents. It had been a long day — the seventh victim had been discovered that morning, near one of the piers along the Embarcadero.

“Speaking of happier,” I whispered, “you seem to be in a good mood all of a sudden.”

His mischievous eyes slid in my direction. “We finally have a witness, a good one. That’s why we called this meeting.”

“A witness? When?”

“Called us while you were out picking up dinner. Works the graveyard shift at the ferry building. She was on her way home, just before dawn, when she saw a suspect slipping away from the area where we later found the body. She didn’t think anything about it until she saw the story on the evening news.”

“This could be the break we need, Jack.”

He nodded hopefully. “She’s down the hall now with an artist, talking him through a sketch. We should have it in the next hour.”

After the meeting, I raced down the hall to watch our artist put the finishing touches on his drawing, while the witness made her final suggestions. As he added a soul patch beneath the lower lip and a fedora above the riveting dark eyes, my eagerness turned to dread.

The resemblance to Eduardo Arce was unmistakable.

Against all my training and every regulation, I didn’t turn Eduardo in, not right away. I felt certain I could save him on my own.

While Jack joined the chief to alert the media and organize a search of the city, I ran Eduardo’s name through an international crime database. When that turned up nothing, I had the crime lab lift his prints from the business card he’d given me, putting a priority on it. When I ran the prints, I struck gold.

Eduardo Arce was an alias. But he was in the system just the same — not as a criminal or violent mental patient, but as a significant missing person. According to the report I downloaded, he’d been a decorated detective in Buenos Aires a decade ago, heading an investigation into homicides with overtones of vampirism, before suddenly disappearing after closing in on a suspect. He’d later been spotted in various Latin American cities, until the leads had dried up. When I checked my notes from my earlier research, I realized these places were linked in several disturbing ways: Each city had reported an unsolved string of murders that involved mutilation of the neck and bloodletting; all the victims had been known violent criminals; and each series of murders had coincided with the time period Eduardo had been seen there. Wherever he’d traveled, including San Francisco, similar homicides had followed. There seemed no doubt that Eduardo was our Vampire Killer.

Of course, I should have reported my findings to the task force immediately, so we could put out an APB and bring him in. But loneliness and longing are powerful emotions. They can corrupt a person’s reason and erode their sense of caution. It happens all the time, to men and women alike. It happened to me.

It wasn’t Eduardo who was strangling people and drinking their blood, I told myself, it was someone he’d become because the wiring in his head had gone wrong. I wanted to find him first and bring him safely in, and help him get the treatment he needed to be whole and sane again. He’d never hurt me, I was sure of that.

To buy myself some time, I printed out the database reports and left them with Eduardo’s business card on Jack’s desk, knowing he’d be busy elsewhere for much of the next hour. Then, as the clock neared eleven, I drove to North Beach and the loft on Broadway where Eduardo Arce danced the tango.

During the night, a blinding fog had risen ghostlike from the bay and crept into the city, up the hills, and along the nearly deserted streets.

I parked on Columbus Avenue across from City Lights Books, so I could make my approach without being seen. I hurried up to Broadway, where I crossed to the north side and turned right, heading east. As I passed a bar that was nearly empty, I looked in to see a television set turned on to the eleven-o’clock news. The police sketch of Eduardo’s face stared back at me from the screen. I realized Eduardo might also have seen it, and quickened my step.

As I passed Enrico’s, the outside tables were empty and the workers were closing up early for the night. I reached the corner and dashed across Kearny, just in time to see the neon letters spelling out Milonga del Eduardo go dark, followed by the lights inside. Moments later, someone stepped out and quickly locked up. He was wearing a gray fedora and long dark coat with the collar turned up, keeping his head down. I pressed myself into a doorway, just glimpsing his handsome features as he hurried down the stairs and darted across Broadway. I stepped out and called after him.

“Eduardo!”

He glanced back, looking startled, then stricken. He strode on, turning down Kearney, disappearing into the heavy fog. I chased after him. The sound of his footsteps led me down a deserted block to Pacific Avenue. Instinctively, I turned right, back toward Columbus, where my car was parked. Seconds later, running, I caught sight of him again.

“Eduardo! Please, wait!”

He dashed on, swallowed up again by the mist. I picked up his trail, listening to his muffled footsteps. As I reached Columbus, I saw a lone figure standing across the street outside the popular Vesuvio Cafe, which had gone dark for the night.

It was Eduardo. He just stood there, staring plaintively at me through the drifting fog, almost as if he wanted me to come after him.

I raised a hand, reaching out. “Eduardo! Please!”

He turned and fled into Jack Kerouac Alley, the short lane that separates the cafe from City Lights Books. There was no traffic, so I darted across. Halfway down the alley, Eduardo grasped a handrail and descended out of sight. As I chased after him, the stench of stale urine hit me and a rat scurried away into hiding. When I reached the place where Eduardo had disappeared, I saw several steps leading down to a door that was slightly ajar. Adjacent to the door, a barred window was covered from the inside with heavy black curtains. I unfastened the guard on my holstered handgun and started down.

I was about to push open the door when my pager beeped. It was Jack calling. He’d just found the reports I’d left him; he was in his car and wanted to know my location. I glanced at my watch, calculating the minutes. I needed only enough time to talk some sense into Eduardo, to convince him to give himself up. I told Jack where I was and abruptly signed off.

I pushed open the door and stepped into darkness. My flashlight was in the car, and a light switch I found on the wall didn’t work. I could hear Eduardo somewhere inside, breathing heavily.

“Eduardo, please talk to me.”

His voice came back, subdued and sad. “We’re beyond talking. We’ve reached the end.”

“Every cop in the city is looking for you. Let me take you in. Let me get you the help you need.”

“Only you can help me now, Alice.”

“That’s why I’m here.” I clamped my eyes shut, fighting tears. “To help you find some peace.”

“You see? We want the same thing, you and I.”

He was suddenly beside me. His strong arm snaked around my shoulders, clutching me tight. I stiffened but didn’t pull away. I wanted him to trust me, to understand that I cared about what happened to him.

His lips hovered above my neck as he murmured my name. “Alice.” It was like a moan, from deep within. “My dear, lovely Alice.”

While I tried to reason with him, he led me further into the basement room and its dank, dungeonlike smell. He struck a match and lit a candle. Next to us was a long, narrow table. On the table lay a wooden stake and a heavy wooden mallet.

I tried to turn him back toward the door. “Eduardo, please. They’re coming for you.”

“Then we must hurry.” He turned me forcefully to face the implements on the table. “You must do this for me, Alice. Before they arrive.”

“Eduardo, for God’s sake. No more of these vampire theatrics.”

His eyes flashed. “That’s what you think this is — a performance?”

“Not to you. I’m sure, in your mind, you believe in the myth.” I glanced at the sharply pointed stake and heavy mallet. “I’m sure that to you all this is real.”

He took a deep breath, becoming calmer. “I only sought blood from those who deserved to die. I’ve been very careful about that. No innocent victims.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I always left them where the sunlight would strike them before they woke, to make sure they didn’t survive and become like me, to hurt others.”

“They were strangled, Eduardo, and then died from their loss of blood. Sunlight didn’t kill them.”

His eyes flared again. “You don’t believe me?”

“If what you say is true, then explain how you became like this — one of the ‘undead.’”

He quickly recounted the bizarre serial killings he’d investigated ten years ago in Buenos Aires. “I was close to making an arrest, but I took foolish risks. The suspect was a beautiful woman with irresistible powers. She caught me in a moment of weakness, and made me like her.”

It sounded like hypnosis, like a deep, unbreakable trance. In college, earning my degree in police science, I’d studied cases like that, involving clever sociopaths who’d imposed their will and dark fantasies on others. Charles Manson was perhaps the most famous, but there were others. Before I could make my argument, Eduardo glanced again at the lethal tools.

“I finally stopped her,” he said, “in the only way I could. But too late to save myself.”

“You killed her?”

“I released her from the damnation of eternal life. Now you must do the same for me.”

The depth of his belief made me shiver.

“According to the legend,” I said carefully, “sunlight is deadly to people like you.” I indicated the heavy curtains covering the window. “So why not expose yourself at daybreak and be done with it? You could have done it long ago.”

He hesitated, shuddering. “Because I’m afraid.” He dropped his eyes in seeming shame. “For someone like me, it’s a horrible process.”

“Is that what she told you? The woman you mentioned?”

He nodded pathetically. “I’m afraid that when the time comes to face the sunlight, I’ll lack the courage to go through with it. So I live in darkness.” He reached out, touched the mallet and stake. “This is the only way. A sudden stroke, no hesitation.”

“Eduardo, listen to yourself!” I felt my tears spill over. “You can’t believe what you’re saying.”

He grabbed the stake and mallet, thrusting them toward me. “Don’t let me die locked up, cowering from the daylight, while I’m laughed at and scorned.” His desperate eyes searched mine for his salvation. “Give me my freedom, Alice. End my suffering.”

I pulled him close, feeling him tremble against me. “I want to help you, Eduardo. I do.”

Police sirens suddenly screamed outside, causing him to pull away and prick up his ears. He climbed onto the long table, lying faceup, and tore open his shirt to bare his chest. When he placed my hand over his heart, I could feel its rapid beating. His pleading eyes were locked on mine, holding me transfixed, the way he’d held me so many nights on the dance floor, giving me the comfort I’d needed, reigniting the flame inside me that had nearly sputtered out.

“Do you love me, Alice?”

“More than anything.”

“Then do this for me. I beg you.”

Tires squealed as police vehicles turned into the narrow alley. The sound of their sirens pounded against the close walls. Eduardo pressed the tools into my hands and blew out the candle. I heard Jack Riordan’s voice calling my name, police boots thundering down the steps, the rustle of bulletproof vests as guns were raised and aimed into the darkness. Flashlights illuminated the room, searching wildly.

Eduardo closed his eyes. “Quickly, Alice. Do it now.”

I touched his face, kissed him on the lips. Then, in no more time than it takes to draw a breath, or lose one’s mind, I drove the stake deep into his heart with a single blow. In that terrible moment, Eduardo’s insanity became my own. A brief but hideous scream erupted from him, filling the room, filling my head, shattering what was left of the fragile structure of my self that I’d always thought was so strong and indestructible.

I hear it still, all these years later. It echoes through my waking dreams, along with the bittersweet strains of the bandoneon and the cries and curses of the other mental patients around me that punctuate my long and sleepless nights, as I pray for rest.

Copyright © 2009 John Morgan Wilson