Page 29 of Cooper’s Passion

“Sheriff,” Cooper interjected. “There is something that you could do for us. We need everything you have on Janet Fillmore. We’re trying to establish what made her vulnerable to him; what made him choose her.”

“Of course, I’ll send it to you.”

Cooper glanced at Anita. “Go ahead and email it to Anita. We’ll take it from there.”

“If there’s anything else, please let me know. And Anita, honey, you can call me anytime you want to talk.”

“Thanks, Dad.”

“Thank you, sir.” Cooper disconnected the call. “That didn’t go too badly.”

“Thanks to you.”

He winked. “Didn’t want you guys to start a screaming match.”

Anita hugged him tightly.

“So, tell me, you saw Janet Fillmore disappear with the killer?”

She nodded. “I was out for a drink at one of the dive bars in Elko. It was a busy night, and I had a few drinks. Maybe one too many. Anyway, I left the bar just after midnight. I went into the parking lot to get my car, but then I thought better of it and called an Uber. So I waited. That’s when I saw her. She was getting into a white van. I saw the guy only from behind. But I recognized Janet. She looked like she was drunk or under the influence of something. I called out to her to see if she was all right, but she didn’t even turn her head as if she hadn’t heard me.”

Cooper knew what that indicated. Janet had been under the influence of a vampire’s mind control. “She got into the van without him forcing her physically?”

“Yes. It was so odd. At first, I thought maybe he was an acquaintance, and she’d been drinking, and he was offering to drive her home, but she never got home. That’s the last time anybody saw or heard of her. I wish I’d gone over there to check on her. I could have stopped him.”

The thought sent a chill down his spine. Anita wouldn’t have been able to fight him. No human could best a vampire. “Don’t go there. You couldn’t have known. Janet’s husband, he didn’t file a missing persons’ report?”

“No. He’s a loser, and they probably had a fight, and he figured she’d finally left him.”

“Hmm. Tell me about the van.”

“It was a plain white van like thousands of others. I couldn’t see the license plates. Too dirty. But he had a sticker on the back of it. SF. I later found that exact symbol on the internet. It was a San Francisco Giants sicker.”

“And that led you to San Francisco?”

“Yes. He’d already abducted and left bodies in Sacramento, Santa Rosa, Oakland, and a few other towns in northern California, so the sticker was as good a lead as any I’d ever get. I figured he has a connection to San Francisco.”

“Hmm. Did you try to trace the van? I mean you must have had access to traffic cams.”

“I tried that. But there was nothing. He must have stayed off the main roads and somehow gotten to the freeway via an on-ramp where we had no cameras nearby.”

Cooper nodded. He’d half expected this. Anita was a good cop. She knew how to track a suspect. But this suspect was smart, smarter than the average criminal. And more dangerous. As a vampire, he would know how to stay out of sight, and he would only travel at night. Few people would notice him. Or his van.

“Okay,” Cooper said with a deep breath. “Let’s put a plan together of how to catch this guy.”

“Do you think he’s still in the city?”

“I think so. If he has a connection to San Francisco, and being a San Francisco Giants fan suggests so, it’s likely that he has a place here that he uses regularly, a place where he can keep his victim locked up until he’s ready to kill her, a place where he can park his van out of sight.” And a place where he could hide from the sun, but Cooper couldn’t tell her that.

“Okay, then let’s start with the van. Can we get SFPD to give us access to the traffic cams?” Anita asked.

“Already done,” Cooper confirmed. Scanguards had continuous access, courtesy of the chief of police himself. “Text me Janet’s photo. I’ll distribute it to everybody to see if there have been sightings in the days before her death. It might lead us to him. I’ll have our IT team run it through facial recognition.”

Anita looked energized, ready to go into battle. “That’s great. Let’s do that. And I need to go over my files again. There has to be something else besides the physical attributes that define his victims.”

“That’s what I think too. I have to read your files anyway to see what else you’ve dug up. In the meantime, my team can comb through the traffic cams and run Janet’s photo through facial recognition.”