Page 57 of Whispers at Dusk
“Thank you,” he said.
“Of course,” Angela murmured. “And thank you. And Della... I know doing what we’re doing is new for the Krewe, and you’re hopping all over—”
“In style, at least,” he interrupted dryly.
Angela laughed. “Hey, it’s nice back here at home, too. Anyway, trust me. We are working this to the bone, too, from here.”
“Thanks. If we can get an ID on him, we can get him.”
“Yep. And we will.”
They ended the call. The others were looking at him, even Robertson, who was glancing his way in the rearview mirror.
“When we get the saliva off the fangs, I’d be willing to bet a month’s pay we’ll discover he’s a prisoner—dead or alive—in the US somewhere,” he said.
“So,” Edmund Taylor said, frowning, “you think the killer is American?”
“I think he’s a chameleon. Maybe an American—maybe someone with dual citizenship. Someone who knows his way around the US and the US legal system—and Europe.”
“And it might be the main man here,” Robertson said.
“Maybe. We can hope. And hope, of course, we get him,” Mason said.
“We’ll reach the Standing Stones of Stenness in about twenty minutes,” Robertson said. “We’ve got the site cordoned off. A forensic team has been out, but more eyes never hurt. Especially since you’ve been to other sites these killers chose.”
Robertson had nailed it; they reached the area in less than twenty minutes. He parked the car and they headed out.
The body had been discovered by a small clump of bushes near the Loch of Harray.
“Hidden just a bit from the many tourists who head this way,” Robertson told them as they walked out. “But meant to be found. You can see the markings where the body lay. We don’t seem to have much of a problem with visitors—or locals—leaving behind cigarette butts or beer cans. I mean to a lot of young people, there’s nothing exciting about standing stones, even if they are thousands of years old. But... Well, there’s also little traffic here at night, so...”
“Grid around the body site?” Mason suggested.
“I’ll take north,” Edmund said.
“South,” Lapierre said, shrugging.
“Mason, if it’s okay, I’m going to move toward the stones,” Della said.
“I’ll head around this area toward the water,” Mason said. “Check out the banks of the Loch of Stenness and the Loch of Harray.”
“And I’ll stand here, and see what I might have missed,” Robertson said.
They all moved as they had said they would. Mason watched as Della walked toward the four remaining stones and into the center of the circle. If he remembered his history right—determined by leading archaeologists through the years—there had originally been twelve stones with a hearth in the center of the circle.
He moved toward the Loch of Harray at first, north of the Loch of Stenness. The water, rippling beneath a strong breeze that moved the waves, was beautiful. As was the countryside.
He knew that once again there had to be something to the locations chosen for the killings, even if they were committed by different killers.
Something that meant something to the main killer.
London was...
A huge city, an old city, old Roman Londinium. Nowhere nearly as old as the stones here in the Orkneys, but it had been founded around 50 AD on the Thames. London was huge, however. Paris was also huge—in comparison to Lillehammer and now to this area of Scotland. Julius Caesar mentioned what would become Paris in the first century BC, a time when Rome was conquering the known world.
The ancient Romans had believed in a vampiric creature—they’d called it Strix. It was a demonic creature that lived off blood, particularly enjoying babies.
Lillehammer had been a settlement of one kind or another since the Iron Age. The Vikings had their draugar creature, again, demonic and blood-sucking.
