“Nice,” Portia remembered aloud, recalling the phone conversation. None of Dionne’s friends could explain what had happened to her, but the last person to admit seeing her, one of her professors, Dr. Grotto, had at least seemed concerned. Grotto’s specialty was teaching classes on vampirism, sometimes using a Y in the spelling—like vampyrism—which was a little odd, though people could become intrigued and inspired by the strangest things sometimes. In his midthirties, Grotto was sexier than any college professor had the right to be. The old Hollywood description of “tall, dark, and handsome” fit him to a T, and he certainly was far more interesting than any of the old dusty profs who had been her teachers in her two years at All Saints over a decade earlier.
The other missing girls were Caucasian, though they, too, had disjointed, uninterested families who had written them off as irresponsible runaways, “always in trouble.”
How odd they had all ended up at All Saints and subsequently disappeared within eighteen months.
Coincidence? Portia didn’t think so.
The media had finally noticed and was adding some pressure. The public was now nervous, the police department receiving more calls.
Since Dionne had disappeared over a year ago, Tara Atwater and Monique DesCartes had also vanished, Monique in May, Tara in October, and now Rylee Ames. All of them took some of the same classes, primarily in the English Department, including the class on vampyrism taught by Dr. Dominic Grotto.
Slap!
A file landed atop her photos.
“Hey!” Detective Del Vernon said, resting a hip on her desk. “Still caught up in the missing girls?”
Here we go again, Portia thought on an inward sigh, expecting a lecture from the ex-military man turned detective. Vernon had the “three-B-thing” going for him: bald, black, and beautiful. Though he was in his forties, he’d never lost his U.S. Marine-honed build. His shoulders were wide and straight, his waist trim, and according to Stephanie, one of the secretaries for the department, his butt was “tight enough to hold in his bad-ass attitude.” And she was right. Vernon had a great body. Portia tried not to notice.
“What’s this?” she asked, picking up the file and flipping it open to a crime scene report and the picture of a dead woman.
“Jane Doe…throat slashed, from the Memphis PD. Looks like it could be the same guy who killed the woman we found last week near River Road.”
“Beth Staples.”
“I want you to check it out.”
“You got it,” she said, and waited for him to remind her that the girls missing from All Saints weren’t known to be victims of homicide and therefore not their concern.
Yet.
But he didn’t. Instead Vernon’s cell phone rang and he thumped his fingers onto her desk before walking back through the maze of cubicles. “Vernon,” he said crisply, crossing the threshold to his private office and kicking the glass door shut behind him.
Portia picked up the Jane Doe file, turning her attention away from the pictures of the coeds. There was a chance that she was wrong, a chance that the missing coeds were, indeed, still alive, just teenage runaways rebelling and getting into trouble.
But she wasn’t laying odds on it.
Two days after Kristi moved in, she landed a job as a waitress at a diner three blocks from campus. She wasn’t going to get rich making minimum wage and tips, but she would have some flexibility with her shifts, which was exactly what she’d wanted. Waiting tables wasn’t glamorous work, but it beat the hell out of working for Gulf Auto and Life Insurance Company, where she’d spent too many hours to count in the past few years. Besides, she hadn’t given up her dream of writing true crime. She figured with the right story, she could become the next Ann Rule.
Or a close facsimile thereof.
Twilight had settled as she crossed campus, her backpack slung over one shoulder, her head hunched into her shoulders as the first drops of rain began to spatter the ground on this, the day before New Year’s Eve. A gust of winter wind stole through the quad, rattling the branches of the oak and pine trees before brushing the back of her neck with a frosty kiss. She shivered, surprised at the drop in temperature. She was tired from the move and her legs felt leaden as she angled past Cramer Hall, where she’d lived her freshman year of college nearly ten years earlier. It hadn’t changed much, certainly not as much as she had, she thought ruefully.
Her breath fogged in front of her, and from the corner of her eye she thought she saw a movement, something dark and shadowy, in the thick hedge near the library. Gaslights glowed blue, casting watery light, and though she squinted, she saw no one. Just her overactive imagination.
But who could blame her? Between her own experiences at the hands of predators, her father’s warnings, and her landlady’s remarks, she was bound to be jumpy. “Get over it,” she admonished, cutting past Wagner House, a huge stone edifice with dark mullioned windows and black iron filigree. Tonight, the grand old manor seemed foreboding, even sinister. And you think you can write true crime? How about fiction? Maybe horror? Or something equally creepy with your imagination! Geez, Kristi, get a grip!
Hurrying as the rain began to pour, she heard footsteps on the walk behind her. She hazarded a quick glance over her shoulder and saw no one. Nothing. And the footsteps seemed to have stopped. As if whoever was following her didn’t want to be discovered. Or was mimicking her own hesitation.
Her stomach squeezed and she thought about the can of pepper spray in the backpack. Between the spray and her own skill in self-defense…
Dear God, get over yourself!
Hoisting her bag higher, she started off again, ears straining for the scrape of leather against concrete, the whisper of heavy breathing as whoever it was gave chase, but all she heard was the sound of traffic in the streets, tires humming over wet asphalt, engines rumbling, an occasional squeal of brakes or whine of gears. Nothing sinister. Nothing evil. Still, her heart was hammering and despite her mental berating, she unzipped a pocket of the leather pack and fumbled for the canister. Within seconds it was in her hand.
Again she looked over her shoulder.
Again she saw nothing.
Half running, she cut across the lawn and through the gate nearest her apartment. She’d reached the street when her cell phone jangled. Jumping wildly, she cursed softly under her breath as she reached into her coat pocket. Her father’s name lit the screen. Clicking on, and grateful, for once, that he had called, she greeted, “Hey, don’t you ever work?”
“Even cops get breaks every once in a while.”
“And so you decided to take one and check up on me?”
“You called me,” he reminded her.
“Oh, right.” She’d forgotten…one more little reminder that she wasn’t a hundred percent—her damned faulty memory. Every once in a while, she totally blanked out on something important. “Look, I wanted to tell you my new address and that I got a job at the Bard’s Board. It’s a diner and all the food is named after Shakespearean characters. You know, like Iago’s iced latte and Romeo’s Reuben and Lady Macbeth’s finger sandwiches or something. It’s owned by two ex-English teachers, I think. Anyway, I have to learn them all by Monday morning when I start. I guess it’ll get me back into the swing of the whole memorizing thing again.”
“Romeo’s Reuben sounds sexual.”
“Only to you, Dad. It’s a sandwich. I might not mention it to your partner.”
“Montoya will love it.”
She smiled and, as she reached the apartment house, asked, “So how’re you feeling?”
“Fine. Why?”
She thought of the image of him fading