Exsanguination

Collinsport. The deaths of two young women had created a stir in the small town of Collinsport. Each of the victims, having died from the loss of blood, where found with two small punctures on their necks. Lieutenant Mills, acting Chief of the Collinsport Police, had at first suspected Darien Blackwater of the death of the first victim owing to his delusions – but the second victim proved him to have been incapable of having committing both crimes. And so, a detective from Providence has arrived in Collinsport as similar victims of so-called animal attacks have occurred in Rhode Island.

It had been an early morning for him, much earlier than usual.

He had taken the 6:28 US Airways flight from Providence via Washington to Bangor, arriving at 11:57. There he had rented a car and driven the hour and fifteen minutes to Collinsport. The countryside was verdant, the sea fairly much the same as that in Rhode Island. Further north, a bit colder no doubt.

As he drove in across the bridge he found the small seaport reminded him very much of Kingsport, Massachusetts. And of what he knew about the city, it was more similar in other ways than just architecture, fishing boats, ancient wharfs, and the growing tourism. It was that similarly which had brought him via jet and rental car to the small community on Frenchman’s Bay.

Detective Jonathan Frid would have preferred a meeting with Jamison St. Clair, the Chief of Police for Collinsport – but that was not possible as she was in a hospital in Arkham recovering from an attempted assassination. But, after speaking to Lieutenant Mills for about ten minutes he found her to be very competent. Something that should not have surprised him, seeing as how St. Clair had put the department together after the death of Sheriff Patterson. Who had been murdered less than a year ago. It seemed in Collinsport higher-ranking law enforcement officers were becoming targets. Perhaps becoming ever more like Kingsport or worse – Arkham.

Frid had met St. Clair about a year ago when she was still a homicide detective with the Arkham PD. They had worked together on a freakish case of multiple mutilation murders – ritualistic and horrific. They had eventually traveled to that horrible, myth-haunted little town of Innsmouth, Massachusetts in order to apprehend the degenerate Enoch Gilman. Frid can still remember those big, oddly unblinking eyes of the psychotic killer.

He was no stranger to unusual cases and this was beginning to look like one. He glanced at his watch as they rode down the elevator – he and Lieutenant Mills, whom it seemed was acting Chief of Police. It was 2:30. Most of the day spent in travel. But then, if he was correct, nothing much was going to happen until night.

Although he found her to be highly efficient and intelligent, Lieutenant Mills was most certainly a by the book, no-nonsense detective, who if she were ever to be confronted face-to-face with some grotesque aspect of the unusual, i.e. the supernatural, she would simply refuse to accept that fact. Refuse to belief in anything having to do with the paranormal. He would have to lead and guide gently if his suspicions were correct. Drop hints and see where they would lead.

“So, I understand you now have a second victim, Lieutenant Mills?”

“Yes we do, no idea of who she is though. Haven’t had the time or staff for DNA testing.”

He nods, “Well, we had three in Providence before they just suddenly stopped.”

The slowly moving elevator now sounded a slight ding

“Ah. Here we are.” The doors open and Lieutenant Mills stepped out into the brightly lit basement. “This is our morgue. Sorry about the mold. We’re right under poor Patterson’s damned fishpond.”

“Did I see fish in there?” Detective Frid asks stepping out of the elevator behind her.

Lieutenant Mill turns and trying to conceal her embarrassment nods, “Yes you did. From what I hear the old man would fish from it. Truly absurd, really.”

He looks about the morgue, it was amazing how they always have the same look, the same harsh light – the same smell.

“And here is our new forensics expert.” Lieutenant Mills tells as she leans him across the room toward the tall brunette in green scrubs, who is working now upon a woman’s corpse lying on the stainless steel autopsy table. The autopsy incision had been made and the woman was opened up like some grim flower. The expert, well, she wore dark gothic make-up, black eye-liner, lipstick, and some whitish powder, which made her appear even paler in the harsh fluorescent lighting. She had several black necklaces around her neck highlighted by a single silver one; a spiked armband was around the biceps of her right arm. She also wore a wide metal arm band stenciled with the word Love.

Isabella Collins was bent over a corpse when the officers entered and though aware of their presence she did not look up, rather she continued her excavation inside the corpse, “Lieutenant.” She says.

“Collins, must you wear that get up? You look deader than some of these corpses!” Lieutenant Mills says as she and Detective Frid approach the table.

With a quick upward glance, and an entirely forced smile, Isabella Collins shrugs her shoulders and looks back down at the open body on her table, pulling out the lower intestines and placing them on the scale.

Lieutenant Mills sighs. It was always something here in Collinsprt. “Isabella Collins, this is Detective Jonathan Frid of Providence PD.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you Miss Collins,” he says noting she does not have on a wedding band.

She looks up at the detective, “Excuse me for not shaking hands, but they’re a little preoccupied.’”

He smiles at her.

“So what have you got for us Collins?” The Lieutenant asks.

Detective Frid looks at the body, making note of the twin wounds on the neck. “Looks exactly like the three we have in Providence, Lieutenant.”

“Your basically right.” Isabella Collins says, having already checked the Providence ME’s findings.

“I had a feeling it would.” He says.

She steps back from the table and pulls at the thin latex gloves, removing them to toss them over into a near by trashcan.

“Like the other body, Alice McFadden, this one also died from exsanguination.” She glances over at the detective from Providence, as she writes a few notes on a form clipped to the metal clipboard resting on the table beside her, “And, like the three victims you have down in Rhode Island.”

Detective Frid frowns.

Isabella Collins walks back over to the body and leans on the edge of the table.

“Exhaustion?” Lieutenant Mills mutters, “Mmm, the both of them?”

With her black nailed finger Isabella points at the pale blue white flesh of the corpse’s neck, “And as you seem to have noticed, there are the same two small holes on the side of her neck.”

“Yes, they are hard to miss.” Lieutenant Mills nods.

“Well . . .” Isabella Collins is about to say.

“Just like the victims we have, “Detective Frid looks up, “Did you happen to find any salvia on their necks?”

She looks at him and makes a small face as she continues her train of thought before his interruption, “It appears that a great amount of blood loss came from just these two wounds.” She then shakes her head, “Mmm.”

“Our ME found an oddity on one of ours.” Detective Frid says looking over at Lieutenant Mills. “Salvia—which seemed to be human.”

Lieutenant Mills looks at him, “Where you able to trace it?”

“Well, you see that was part of his bafflement, I mean . . . it was consistent with salvia . . . he said–but when the test of DNA came back there was an oddity. He said it was human-like.”

“I noticed that in his report – human-like.” Isabella Collins says rather curious.

“But according to the findings, there were some other strange traces in the DNA so we just figured that perhaps an animal had licked the wounds afterwards. Contaminating the sample.”

Isabella Collins picks up a tray lying near by and holds it out to the officers, “I did find these.”

Lieutenant Mills looks at the tray,” What are we looking at Collins?”

“I found linen fibers on the neck, around the wound.”

“Linen?” Mills asks.

She nods, “From a cloth, perhaps a handkerchief.”

“The width of the wounds, the bites—are they like ours consistent with the canine teeth of a human?”

Isabella Collins places the tray back on the stainless steel instrument table, “No there . . . well . . . kind of—the wounds on her neck were made by two sharp punctures – like that of an animal, or a rodent actually, possibly a bat, but they where much larger in general size than any rodent I know of – so, if it were possible, a human sized bat I guess.”

“So something that cannot possibly exist.” Lieutenant Mills looks up at Miss Collins.

“Well—I just provide the evidence – what it all means is means is up to your investigation.”

Detective Frid leans over and looks at the wounds.

“So, yes, it could be human-like.” She nods.

He slips on a latex glove and now begins to touch the wounds.

Isabella Collins reaches over quickly and shoves the detective off the corpse, “Excuse me. Until she is released – this young woman’s body is mine and she doesn’t need you poking about her.”

“I was thinking on the way up here, Miss Collins. Is it possible that someone, say someone deluded into thinking that they were – I don’t know, let’s say a vampire, or something, could they possibly have had a set of dentures made that could make those type of wounds?”

“Miss Collins, let him examine the body if he wishes.” Lieutenant Mills frowns at the overprotective medical examiner.

“I am sorry, but please, don’t touch the body, “ Isabella Collins says and blushes a little at her rashness.

He nods, “I am sorry, this is your morgue, your office. I was just—I just wanted to see if they were about the same width. I should have asked.”

“Yes, you should have.” The lieutenant she can have the run the upper floor, but here, Isabella gives her a look that says, here, this is my domain.

“Well, I think it is quite possible to have one made. I even had a suspect in mind. He had a history of mental illness—was delusional. Had a vampire fixation. That was until he fled the country, and I did not have enough to pin on him to get the Feds involved.

“Didn’t you have similar attacks about a year ago?” Detective Frid asks.

With a nod of her head, Lieutenant Mills agrees, “Yes—but those two women survived. They were both attacked near a lesbian bar. But there were no other attacks – in the case notes Sheriff Patterson’s concluded that the attacks were the result of a lover’s spat – a lesbian triangle – those are his words not mine.”

“Actually its very common.” Isabella Collins says, and then looks at them, “Oh, I meant, the teeth. I mean I bought a pair of vampire teeth off ebay just the other day.”

Lieutenant Mills gives Miss Collins a look of chagrin although she says: “Collins, that does not shock me at all, that you would!”

Detective Frid now cuts a sideward glance over to Lieutenant Mills, “We have a club in Providence where people come dressed as vampires, all this Bite Night and True Blood popularity, it’s a fad now. Perhaps we have a killer who thinks of himself as one – you know.”

“Yes. I understand it is quite popular with kids these days.” Liuetenant Mills nods, “Heavens knows why.”

“It is all bound up with sex, you know.” Isabella Collins says, “It’s all about repressed sexual desires.”

Lieutenant Mills looks at her, “Do you happen to have your teeth on you Collins?”

She looks shocked, as if she would bring them to work, “No! My teeth are at home. However I can bring up the website that sells custom fitted teeth for you, if you would like.”

“Sorry, Miss Collins, no need to get defensive, whatever you do with your teeth in the privacy of your home . . . I just wanted to know how strong they are? How sharp they could be filed down?”

“Oh—there is such a site?” Detective Frid asks.

‘Yes. There are several. The teeth you can buy are built for biting and simulating vampires for Cosplay.”

He looks now back over to the Lieutenant, “You say you had a suspect, Lieutenant?”

“Yes. A Darien Blackwater. He was a follower of one of these fads with psychological issues and a lack of pills. Seemed the perfect suspect for the first, vic, Alice McFadden, he even attempted to attack a professor from the Miskatonic University, who was visiting Collinsport. But, the second attack happened after he had already fled. And even if it’s not false teeth, such crude devices can be made out of metal that would simulate bite marks I would think.”

Frid shakes his head, “He certainly sounded promising. I can say that this one is just really sick. I mean to drain them of blood . . . ”

“As well as the fact they were drained slowly, not a really fast gushing wound like a severed artery.” Isabella Collins tells him, “But—despite it all, I don’t think these teeth where fake.”

“Oh? Why is that?” Lieutenant Mills says – she likes this working theory. A real nut case, inflected by all this ‘history’ nonsense. Some whack job running around like a vampire out of Bite Night.

Detective Frid looks at her Miss Collins with interest.

“Well, the best fake teeth are made from ivory . . . which is illegal . . . so they would have had to be from a fake plaster manufacture – which would leave distinctive traces behind. I didn’t find anything like that on these victims – and neither did the Providence M.E. The only way these bite marks came from fake teeth would be custom made teeth using other human teeth, and that would be highly improbable.”

“Murder is also illegal Collins. I don’t think the perpetrator would care. But you make a good point. We’ll have to investigate the companies that sell the teeth and any possible ivory smuggling connections. It is not outside the realm of possibility that someone with enough resources and enough of a fetish for this sort of thing could have obtained ivory teeth.” The Lieutenant says.

“Of course there is the possibly that there is a different first victim, the very first, one we may know nothing about, who was killed in order to harvest a set of teeth. They would have to file the teeth to a very distinctive point and the size of the tooth would decrease, from the size it is now. So the original set would have had to have been very, very large teeth – especially the K-9 tooth of all the teeth.” Isabella Collins suggests.

Detective Frid shakes his head, “This one is just grows sicker—I mean, actually biting his victim.”

“There was the case of the man in Florida—drug related, where he was eating another man’s face.” Isabella adds.

“Oh, God, just what we need in Collinsport.” Lieutenant Mills says remembering the report she had read.

“Miss Collins, can you tell, was this bite inflicted post-mortem?” Detective Frid asks.

Isabella Collins she shakes her head again, “No, this was done before death.”

“Ivory comes from tusks, which are naturally big, Collins.” Lieutenant Mills adds still thinking about the possible illegal manufacture of a set of ivory teeth.

“And, in the case of this second victim, she died during the bite.”

Detective Frid shakes his head – “God.” He looks over at the Lieutenant, “Like I said, this one has us baffled.”

“I thought it was some form of exhaustion?”

Isabella Collins she points to the bruises around the women’s neck, “I say she died during the bite not from it. Her blood was drained slowly.”

Frid smiles, “The term sounds like that but it is exsanguination – which is blood loss.”

“Ah. I’m not much of the forensics expert as you can see.” She cuts a quick glance over to Miss Collins, undetected – which is why I let you have free run of the basement, she thinks to herself.

“The vics we had in Providence, we assume they were all killed someplace else and then dumped at the discovery sites as our crime scenes have little traces of blood. Is that consistent with your victims also?”

“Possible . . . possible.” Lieutenant Mills nods, “But not necessarily.”

“Yes, all of the blood was removed. “Isabella Collins agrees. “That would have left one bloody crime scene.”

“But why would the killer hide the victims in places so easily found?”

“One of our same questions Lieutenant.”

“A beach in a tourist town in summer is not the place you dump a body that you do not want found.”

“One of ours was found sitting on a bench at a bus stop. Another just out side of a very busy motel – mostly a brothel really.”

“That makes no sense then. Why move the body to a place it is sure to be found? At least the kitchen and motel rooms are less likely than the beach and the bench of a bus stop.”

Detective Frid shakes his head, “This case is just bizarre. I mean – well, I know it is not possible, but one of our detectives is almost of the opinion that it is really a vampire.” He looks at them to see what reaction he gets.

“I’d wager that the murderer, with his or her deranged mind, was very meticulous in collecting the blood. After all, what are vampires supposed to do? I would not be surprised if our murderer has the blood in wine bottles in his fridge.” Lieutenant Mills surmises.

Detective Frid nods, “Might even be sitting around drinking it out of wine glasses you know.”

“Yeah, I’ve been having similar problems with my officers as well.”Lieutenant Mills sighs, “The so-called “History” of this town has them on edge.”

“Well, Lieutenant, I do hate to say this, but I think our killer has moved from Rhode Island to Maine.”

Isabella Collins, who has only recently arrived in Collinsport turns to look at the Lieutenant at the mention of the history, “What do you mean the history?”

“A bunch of old rubbish passed down from generation to generation to scare the kids into obedience. Much of it to do about your family, Collins, although please, don’t you start believing a word of it.”

Detective Frid nods, “Well, Providence has its share of old beliefs also.”

“I don’t believe in weird stuff. I am a forensic scientist – I go by facts and evidence.”

Could have fooled me, Mills thinks looking at her gothic medical examiner.

“It wasn’t until this case – that I discovered that the believe in them, vampires, was fairly wide spread here in New England in the 1800’s.” The detective says.

“Bah. Dracula was written in the 1800’s. Vampires became the fad of the Victorian era.” Lieutenant Mills scoffs.

Isabella Collins leans against the table thoughtfully, “I see . . . “ She is recalling stories told to her by her aunt about the Collins family and its many scandals, as well as its many curses.

“In any case, I hope that we can catch this sonofab**ch before he strikes again.” Mills tells them.

“Yes. I will have copies of all our files sent up to you Lieutenant – it looks like you have our killer in your little town now.”

“Remind me to send the town of Providence a thank you card for it’s lovely gift.” The Lieutenant says.

“Of course, seeing as how he’s crossed state lines, if you wish, you can have the Fed’s brought in now.”

“Thank you. I will remember that option exists.”

Isabella Collins grimaces a little at the idea of FBI medical examiners taking over her office – she once had a very bad experience with one Albert Rosenfield.

“The big thing is keeping this from going viral with the public. Our chief of detectives forbids anyone from even mentioning vampire in any internal memorandums.”

“It will be hard to do that if your examining possible fake teeth.” Miss Collins told him as she put her hands on her hips.

“I make it my strictest policy to avoid using fantasy as an excuse.” Lieutenant Mills says as she looks at her watch. ”Thank you for showing Detective Frid the body Collins. Please put them away now. Detective?” She indicates the door to the elevator.

He nods and smiles, “I hear you – it’s really not at all easy not to use the term — especially when that’s what this killer is posing as.” He turns back now to smile at the attractive brunette, “And yes, thank you Miss Collins.”

Isabella Collins, she rolls her eyes and mutters, “I’ll put them away when I finish my examinations – thank you.” But then looks up at the detective and nods – he was rather nice she thinks and turns to gather up her instruments from the side table turning her back once more to the officers.

Lieutenant Mills escorts the detective back over to the elevator.

Overhead a fluorescent tube flickers.

Detective Frid strides over toward the elevator, and stops for a moment, “Miss Collins, I may be here for a few days still, if you don’t mind, maybe we could meet for drinks and discuss the case.”

Isabella Collins, having grabbing a fresh scale and some scalpel, as she returns to the body looks up. She blushes, “Ummm. . . sure.”

The elevator door opens.

Ding

As the doors close, Detective Frid smiles at Miss Collins

Isabella Collins blushes deeper then her makeup can hide.

Cue Music End of Episode

In Memory of Jonathan Frid
December 2, 1924 – April 14, 2012