An uneasy feeling churned in his gut as he followed the aromas to an apartment. He’d been an officer for enough years to know that rotten smell. It might be hours, if not days before a human nose detected it, but his heightened vampire senses picked up the stench of a rotting body.
Was this where Arnold died? Had he fallen off a ladder and broken his neck while painting a bathroom or changing a lightbulb? But why hadn’t whoever resided here reported the accident?
With little hope of finding life on the other side of the door, he still lifted his hand and knocked on it. No one responded. Unlike Arnold’s apartment, when he grasped this knob and turned it, it didn’t move. Resting his shoulder against the door, he pushed his weight into it until the wood splintered, and the frame gave way.
He winced at the sound of fracturing wood, but none of the neighbors came to their doors. Judging by the mostly empty parking lot, he suspected most of them were at work, but if someone heard the noise and called the police, he had about ten minutes before they arrived. He shouldn’t require that much time.
The sickly sweet, rancid scent of a decaying body and lemons caused his nose to wrinkle. He’d been around more than a few dead bodies during his time on the force, but at least he’d had something to put under his nose to help block the scent. Now, he had nothing to protect him and the nose of a bloodhound.
Using the rag he’d taken from Arnold’s apartment, he wiped off anywhere he’d touched on the door before stepping inside. When he crossed the threshold without any resistance, he realized it wasn’t Arnold’s body he was smelling, but the person who used to live here.
This building was like an old episode of theTwilight Zone. People and creatures moved in, but they never came out again.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Dante closedthe door the best he could, wiped it off, and was careful not to touch anything else as he followed his nose down a hallway and to a cracked open door. With the toe of his boot, he nudged the door open.
He swallowed the bile that rushed into his throat when he saw what lay within. A woman, with her wrists and ankles tied to the four bedposts, was laid out on the bed. Blood from her torn-out throat soaked her clothes and the mattress. On the floor next to the bed was the splayed body of a man he assumed was Arnold.
A toolbox lay next to Arnold’s outstretched right hand, and his throat was torn out, but there was less blood. Dante assumed this was because the vampire who killed them was hungry when they feasted on Arnold, but they were looking for the thrill of the kill when they attacked the woman.
Four of those aroma things were in the room. Two of them had turned off, but the other two were still spewing intermittent blasts of lemon mist into the air. A dozen lemon car fresheners also surrounded the bodies.
He recalled passing a carwash on the way here. Whoever did this probably went to the carwash and bought as many air fresheners as possible. He didn’t know why they decided on lemon and didn’t care.
For the rest of his life, whenever he smelled lemons, his stomach would turn.
Whatever happened here, happened recently. Otherwise, the stench would be so much worse. When he knelt beside Arnold to examine his wound more closely, he didn’t see any evidence of a vampire, but a vampire did this.
And since only one vampire lived in this building, he could imagine who it was. But what did this woman have to do with anything? And how did Arnold get involved?
He left the room and walked to the end of the hall. Wrapping the rag around his hand, Dante used it to open the door before reaching inside to find the light switch. When light flooded the room, he barely kept his jaw from dropping at the spectacle that greeted him.
Thick, gray padding covered the walls, floor, and ceiling. When he stepped inside, he discovered more padding on the back of the door, effectively soundproofing the room. A single bucket sat in the corner. He didn’t have to approach it to know it contained waste; he could smell it from here.
“What the fuck?” he muttered.
And then the hair on his nape rose as it dawned on him;thiswas where Jasmine kept Julie. Just how crazy was Jasmine if she did something like this?
He stepped out of the room and looked down the hall to the room housing the bodies. His brain spun as he tried to figure out what happened here.
He returned to the murder scene to study it again. The more he did so, the more he believed Arnold stumbled upon whatever was happening here by accident. Dante checked his watch; if someone called the police, he should still have a couple of minutes before they arrived, but he had to get out of here soon.
Cautiously, he approached Arnold’s prone figure. Years of training screamed at him not to disturb the scene, but, with the rag, Dante grasped the back of Arnold’s shirt and lifted him. The body was stiff, but already coming out of rigor mortis.
Nothing lay beneath the man, not even a puddle of blood; he gently set the body down.
Next, he used the rag to flip open the lock on the toolbox. Carefully, he lifted the lid and revealed all the tools within. Some electrical tape and a set of wires were also inside the box. He closed the lid and turned on the flashlight on his phone, shining it under the bed. There, in the shadows, was a light switch and screwdriver.
Sitting back on his heels, he studied the two bodies before rising. Knowing the light in the bedroom worked, he walked over to the switch beside the closet and flicked it up; nothing happened.
Studying the scene, and the bodies, he started putting together the pieces of what happened. Arnold was called here to fix the closet light but didn’t have the necessary parts for it. Instead, he ordered them or went to buy them. When he got them, he returned to the apartment to fix it. Having his own set of keys, he let himself in and stumbled across this horror.
But who was the woman? And if Julie was here for two weeks, why hadn’t this woman been reported missing? Her home would have been the first stop the police made.
Dante left the room and strode through the living room. The furniture in this place was almost identical to what was in Jasmine’s apartment. He stopped beside the thick, wood kitchen table tucked beneath the window. A stack of mail sat on it.
The envelope on top had a name on it—Margie Dalton. Unwilling to take the time to write it down, Dante memorized the name as he flipped through the top envelopes. It was mostly bills, but at the bottom was a checklist for a cruise.
