I waited behind the bulletproof partition while the man in chains sat across from me. He looked at me long and hard before he reached over with his cuffed hands and picked up the receiver. His breathing sounded like something remembering something, as the great poet Stan Rice would say. And when he spoke, his voice sounded distant and hollow, too.
"Who are you?" he asked.
I held my business card up against the mesh glass. A cop friend recently told me that a woman had punched through a similar bulletproof glass, but you can't believe everything you hear. Edward Drake leaned forward and read the card, and then leaned back again.
"I always figured someone would come knocking some day," he said.
"Why do you say that?" I asked. He asked me to speak up and I did, louder and with more force. Apparently my shyness didn't translate too well through the glass partition.
"You're kind of shy, aren't you?" he asked, grinning.
I shrugged. I never know how to answer that. And my shyness keeps me from opening up too much about it. A catch-22 if ever there was one.
He kept grinning and said, "Well, anyway, we both know why you're here."
"We do?"
"It's about Evelyn. My ex-wife, of course."
"What about her?" I was holding the phone close to my ear, but not too close and not too hard. I could only imagine how often these ear pieces were cleaned.
He said, "I presume she's missing."
I had been in the act of swallowing and suddenly found myself coughing nearly hysterically. While I hacked away, Edward watched me with a bemused expression.
"Easy, ol' boy," he said.
"And why would you..." I coughed again, "presume that?"
"Because I didn't kill her correctly, you see. I realized my mistake far too late."
"I don't understand."
"It's why I stabbed her so many times."
"Jesus, what are you talking about?"
The bemused expression was gone now. It had been replaced with something unreadable...but cold as hell. "The knife I used, the knife I had thought was silver, wasn't really silver. It was silver plated. An honest mistake."
"I don't - "
"Oh, I think you do, ol' boy."
He was right, but I was having a hard time coming to terms with it, despite my recent past. "You're saying she didn't die because your knife wasn't pure silver."
"Exactly."
"But I've read the autopsy report," I said. "Of course she's dead."
"Oh, I'm sure she appeared dead. They always appear dead, especially if they lose enough blood."
"What the fuck are you talking about?"
"And if they do lose enough blood, it takes them weeks, perhaps even months to recover. And even though the knife was only silver plated, there was undoubtedly enough silver in it to still inflict serious harm."
He stopped and looked at me. I was all too aware that my mouth was hanging open. Flashbacks to events of a few months ago hit me again, and hit me hard. What the hell was going on?
"You're talking about a vampire," I said.
He grinned. "Could you say that a little louder, ol' boy?"