The Vampire Shrink(19)
Author: Lynda Hilburn

"How do you know that? I mean, yes."

"Are you all right?"

"Yes. No. I'm not all right. I just woke up in coffin in a graveyard and I'm covered in stuff I don't even want to think about."

"Are you wounded?"

"No. I don't think so. Not physically, anyway."

"Is that your blood on your hands, Dr. Knight?"

I held my hands out and inspected again, "I don't know. How do you know my name?"

"An FBI agent working with the Denver PD put out a red flag on you. Said you'd gone missing last night. Your pho­to's been running on the local TV stations all morning. You must be an important person, because we're not usually al­lowed to act this fast on a missing person report. It looks like you've had a rough night. If you'll come with us, we can sort everything out and get you some help."

He took another step toward me and scrunched up his nose as he approached. "'Wow. Where did you say you've been?"

A quick visual communication passed between them. Eye contact so covert that if I hadn't been trained to notice such things, I'd have missed it. The look said, "Potential Dis­turbed Person." I knew that look well, having shared it with other professionals in various mental health settings. It's a shorthand code for a set of behaviors—behaviors that calmed the patient and encouraged cooperation. And, while I could understand why they might slide me into that category, I wasn't willing to assume the role.

I was in no mood to be cooperative or polite. My brain had finally kicked back into gear. Along with the fear and confusion I'd experienced since waking up in one of the levels of Hades, I was also pissed. Pissed at whoever dragged me to this place and pissed at being handled. The officers clearly thought I was hallucinating about waking up in a coffin in a graveyard, so I decided to cut to the chase.

I'd been abducted, brought to a maniac's lair, and who knew what else. Now was as good a time as any to take the cops on a tour of Horror Central. I pivoted and trotted back toward the entrance gate to the old graveyard. Hey! Stop! Where are you going?" I'm going to show you where I've been."

I called on my last reserves of glucose and sprinted through the gate into "Capitol Hill Cemetery, an Historical Landmark," with the cops close on my heels.

"Dr. Knight! You've obviously had some kind of trauma; you're not thinking clearly. Let us take you downtown. Stop or we'll have to restrain you."

"Restrain me, my ass. You'll have to catch me first."

If they were going to assume I was irrational, at least I could add some interesting fuel to the fire. I didn't like being treated as an incompetent—even if they meant well—and I never had played nicely with authority figures. It occurred to me that the officers might not know the old graveyard was back there, either, since it was well hidden. If that were the case, it was little wonder my story sounded even more fantas­tic than it would've anyway.

My run through the graveyard was really quite impressive. I managed to find my way back to the ramshackle mausoleum without falling, being obstructed by the city's finest, or turning an ankle. There was something to be said for adrenaline.

I heard one of the officers veil into his communicator, re-questing backup, as they chased along behind me, dodging gravestones and statues.

"Dr. Knight! Stop! We're only trying to help you!'

I skidded to a halt a few feet from the door of the death chamber, and pointed. The police hadn't expected the race to end so suddenly. It was all they could manage not to crash into me as they put on their own brakes.

"'There!'" I jabbed my finger in the air. "Through that door is a stairway. There are dead bodies inside."

“Come on, Dr. Knight. No more games. Let's get you back to the police station. You can explain everything to the detectives. We've been instructed to bring you in immedi­ately. The orders came straight from the chief."

The shorter of the two officers reached out and grabbed my upper arm and tugged gently, coaxing me to accompany him as he started walking back toward the cemetery entrance.

"Did you know there was a cemetery back here?" he said to his partner, who shook his head.

For some reason, getting me back to the police station seemed more important than investigating my story, so I opted for drastic measures. I wrenched my arm out of his hand and leaped over to the door and pulled it open. The smell made my stomach turn. I doubled over and yelled at the cops, "Go on! Nothing normal can smell that bad. You at least have to check it out!"

Each officer put a hand up to his face, covering his mouth and pinching his nose, trying to stave off the smell. The taller one gagged. "That is one godawful smell. Maybe some ani­mal died in there. Let's take a look."

I moved away from the door, putting as much space as possible between me and the stench. I bent forward, bracing my hands just above my knees, still trying not to vomit.

"I'll go down and see what we've got. You stay up here with Dr. Knight."

The smaller cop went through the door and down the stairs, and only a couple of seconds passed before he yelled, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" and scrambled back up the stairs, his face gone pasty and his eyes wide.

"What's wrong with you, McCarthy? You're pale as a ghost!"

"Go down and see for yourself, Landers. A picture's worth a thousand words."

Landers went through the door and I heard a gagging sound and then, "Shit!"

He raced back up the stairs and out into the slightly fresher air, just as the requested backup arrived and put their hands over their noses, too.

A few minutes later, I leaned against a large statue of an angel, drinking from the cup of steaming McDonald's coffee one of the officers handed me, while the new arrivals investi­gated the carnage inside the tomb. Finding something that grotesque had to be the worst part of police work.

McCarthy called for the officers whose job would be to get up close and personal with whatever was down there. He turned to me and stared, appearing a little green around the edges.

"I apologize, Dr. Knight. You were right. There are dead bodies down there. I haven't been on the Force that long, but this definitely qualifies as the worst thing I've seen. Were you really in there all night?"

"I guess so. I can't remember. All I know for sure is that I woke up there this morning."

"This place is going to be swarming with experts any min­ute, so it would probably be best if you let us take you downtown so you can get away from here. You know the media's going to show up, too, and I don't think you want to face the world in that condition." He pointed to my grisly attire and shook his head. "Doyou have a psychologist to talk to?"

I snorted. "Well, now that you mention it, I'm not sure any of them would believe me. I'm not even sure I believe me."

He signalled to a female cop who'd just arrived and asked her to take me downtown. He studied me again. "I'm glad you were persistent."

"That's a nice word for it." I smiled at him. He walked away, talking into his cell phone.

Exhausted, I followed the policewoman out of the cemetery and into her black and white. She opened all the windows, glanced at me in the rear view mirror and said, “No offense.” We pulled away just as the caravan of TV news vehicles ar­rived and I was glad I didn’t have to string two coherent sentences together because I would have failed. I hoped the process at the police station would be quick, but I suspected I was doomed to disappointment.

***

Thanks to the manic media circus camped out around police headquarters, I had to be smuggled in through the under­ground parking structure and secretly ushered in through an old fire exit. It seems my fifteen minutes of fame had caused quite a frenzy. My abduction had gotten linked with the murder investigation, and the vampire theme was simply too rich for the tabloids to pass up.

Sitting at the police station was like having one of those dreams about being in high school again. The one where no one talks to you and everyone walks wide circles around you, staring, pointing, and laughing.

No one was laughing, but anyone who got within ten feet of me cringed, recoiled, and rebounded away, giving me a wide berth. They were shocked to find their nostrils assailed by smells better suited to battlefields than to a psychologist whose face had evidently been on television all morning.

As one officer so succinctly put it, "There just aren't words for that smell."

It didn't take long for me to give my statement, because all I could remember was the last couple of hours. I didn't know what'd happened prior to my waking up and I had noclue about who'd brought me there.

But it turned out I didn't have to worry about getting out of there quickly. In fact, taking my statement in the close quarters of the badly ventilated station proved to be such a challenge that my hosts eagerly arranged for me to be taken over to the lab.

I'd expected to be headed off to the shower and outfitted with one of those delightful orange garments, but that didn't happen.

In fact, ever since I'd arrived at the police station things had been strange.

I'd been the focus of several whispered conversations, each containing the words "the chief."

I was escorted to the lab and was waiting for a blood sample to be taken, when the double doors burst open and a heavyset, white-haired, fifty-something male strode into the room. Every­one around me froze in mid-action and came to attention.

The new arrival signaled to the others, who scurried over immediately.

I would have just stared out the window, waiting for the bureaucratic huddle to end, if it hadn't been for the fact that various faces kept turning in my direction.

I might have been in shock, but I wasn't a complete veg­etable. Clearly, those people were talking about me.

For a brief moment before the older man left, all the eyes in the group turned to me.

What the hell was going on? What weren't they telling me?

I hadn't had much experience with the police, but being treated like a skin-sloughing leper wasn't anywhere in my ex­pectations.

The lab technician who'd earlier been preparing my arm for the blood sample came back and I said, "Who was that?"

He kept his eyes riveted on his task and said, "Chief Cassidy."

"Why was he talking about me?"

Ignoring my question, he responded, "There, all finished. The officer will take you back now."

He wrote my name on the samples, gathered up his mate­rials and nodded to a uniform officer standing by the door.

The officer led me back to the detectives' bullpen. I fig­ured I was going there to answer more questions—not that I had any answers—and I mentally prepared myself for a long stay. I was surprised when they quickly said I was free to go. It seemed they were taking me home and someone would come to my house later to pick up my contaminated clothing.

That piece of information drew several incredulous "What?" responses from various detectives, and I heard someone say I must have powerful friends who could roust the chief out of bed before the crack of dawn to start the search for me, postpone the interrogation and over-ride all the proper procedures.

Powerful friends? I was sure they had me confused with someone else, but that didn't matter. As long as this ordeal was over and I was being taken home, I'd claim to know the Queen of England. Hell, I'd claim to be the Queen of England.

In addition to everything else this situation was. it was humbling.

The pleasure of driving me home once again fell to the policewoman who'd brought me to the station, because, after all, the back seat of her unit was already tarnished. I half expected her to put down newspaper for me to sit on and, frankly, that wouldn't have been a bad idea.

"You're Dr. Knight, right? I'm Officer Colletta. I saw your advertisement in the paper. The one they were talking about on TV this morning. The one that says you're the Vam­pire Psychologist." She examined me in her rearview mirror.

"Yes. I'm Kismet Knight. I'm afraid to know what they were saying about me on TV, so I'm not even going to ask."

She didn't volunteer the information.

"That must be an interesting job—being the Vampire Psychologist. I mean, what do you do, exactly? Are there re­ally people who think they're vampires?"

She lowered her voice and gave me serious eyes in the mirror. "Are there really vampires?"

"If you'd asked me that question a week ago, I'd have said there are people who are disturbed enough to believe they're vampires, and that it's all mental illness and acting out. But after the things I've seen in the last week, all I can say now is 'I don't know'."

She seemed almost magically able to keep the car on the road and watch me in the mirror at the same time. "We've had murders lately. Murders where the victims are drained of blood. Do you know about those?"

"I heard something about that."

"Maybe the murderer is one of your clients?"

Well Thank you for raising a horrible possibility I hadn't con­sidered. "I hope not."

We rode in silence the rest of the way to my house. As we pulled up in front, Officer Colletta said, "I'm surprised the cam­eras aren't here yet. You'd better prepare yourself for a media blitz. You probably won't have much privacy for a while."

I sighed. "I'm afraid you're right. Thanks for everything."

She met my eyes again and nodded. I got out of the cruiser and she pulled away.

I'd just stumbled up to my front door when I heard the screech of tires and the slam of a car door. I assumed the news vans had caught up with me, and was surprised to hear a familiar voice.