Knights of the Blood (11 page)

The “next flight” to New Hampshire fkew as far as Boston’s Logan Airport, where Drummond picked up a Corvette from the Avis rental desk and headed north up Interstate 93. The sign said “Live Free or Die,” as he crossed from Massachusetts into New Hampshire, and within half an hour he was in Auburn. The local Gulf station filled the tank in the Corvette, and the pimply—faced cashier provided vague directions to the Angel of Mercy Sanitarium. Twenty minutes and two wrong turns later, Drummond eased through the gates of the sanitarium and headed up its long, winding drive.

It was like driving through a well—manicured park, Drummond thought–then decided that the grounds looked more like a golf course than a park: gently rolling lawns with only a few scattered trees. The drive swung around to the right, and Drummond’s rented yellow Corvette pulled up in front of the Gothic, cut—granite mansion house.

Drummond had long ago decided that one of the truly great crimes against society was the rape of architecture–fine buildings wantonly destroyed to make way for shopping centers and parking lots, others vandalized by their owners as they were converted into apartments, offices, factories, and hospitals. In its heyday, this mock Elizabethan mansion had probably been extremely elegant, although it was hard to imagine what it must have looked like originally. Grafted onto the building were a variety of additions, mostly constructed from unadorned concrete blocks–although a few were stuccoed and painted a pale, lavatory green.

A light rain began to fall as Drummond got out of his car, causing him to make a dash up to the front door. The door was locked, and as Drummond rang the bell and stood waiting for someone to come and let him in, the skies opened up and he was drenched. When the door did open, he found his way barred by a petite, hard—faced woman with shocking red hair.

“Yes, what do you want?” the woman asked.

“My name is King. I’ve come to see about my uncle. He’s a patient here,” Drummond said, “and I’m getting soaked. Can I come in?”

Reluctantly, the woman admitted him into the foyer. “Wait here,” she said, then vanished behind a thick door set into one of the walls.

At one time the room had been attractive, but that was before the institutional minds that controlled the sanitarium had set about converting the building from a mansion into a hospital. The same sort of people who would be the first to complain about some kid with a spray can putting graffiti on a wall had painted the carved oak paneling of the foyer a light, industrial gray. They had covered the hardwood floors with the sort of linoleum usually encountered on the floors of enormous supermarkets, and had replaced what undoubtedly had been stained glass windows in the stairwell with modern double—glazed units that were framed in extruded aluminum. A. single light bulb, modestly hiding its nakedness behind a fly—specked cardboard shade, dangled down on a length of greasy—looking black flex from where a chandelier had graced this once noble room.

A man’s voice interrupted Drummond’s personal anger at the faceless criminals who had robbed the room of its dignity.

“Mr. King?”

Turning around, Drummond came face—to—face with an elderly priest. He was nearly six feet tall, and although heavyset, Drummond guessed that the priest had been stocky but well—muscled when he was younger.

“Yes,” Drummond said.

“I’m Father Freise. I’m the one who phoned about your uncle.” Freise averted his eyes from Drummond for just a moment; then, looking back at him, said, “Perhaps you’d better come with me to the chapel.”

The two men walked silently down the maddeningly gray hallway that led from the foyer to the chapel. Father Freise paused just inside the door to cross himself with holy water, and Drummond did, too. Inside, they sat down next to each other on one of the simple pews. Drummond waited, determined that Freise should be the first to speak.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Mr. King,” the priest finally said, “but your uncle passed away during the night.” Freise looked intently at Drummond.

“Oh, I see. Well, I guess some arrangements will have to be made.” Drummond kept his voice low.

“Yes. Well, I’ve seen to most of the details, but perhaps you could tell me whether you would like your uncle buried here or at the army cemetery.” Freise nodded almost irnperceptibly toward the door.

“I’m not sure. Maybe you could show me your cemetery, and then I’ll decide.” Drummond hoped he’d made the right choice.

“Certainly,” said Father Freise. “Wait here and I’ll be right back with some umbrellas.”

Outside it had stopped raining by the time Freise returned, and the old priest leaned on one of the furled umbrellas like a walking stick as he and Drummond crunched along the gravel path that led toward the small cemetery, several hundred yards from the house. Only when they had nearly crossed the distance did Freise break the taut silence.

“You were trying to reach me, Captain Drummond. What can I do for you?”

Drummond stopped walking and turned to look the priest in the face. “For starters, you can tell me who killed six young men in Los Angeles in 1972.”

For a few seconds, the only sounds were some birds off in the bushes. Then Father Freise spoke very softly.

“I did,” he said, then turned and continued trudging along the path to the graveyard, with Drummond following speechlessly behind
.

A VICTORIAN
wrought iron fence surrounded the small private cemetery, and it took Father Freise a few seconds to unlock the gate and push it open so that the two of them could enter the grounds. Continuing on a little way, Father Freise sat down on a stone bench underneath a little summer house, resting both of his large hands on the handle of his black umbrella.

“Did the police know?” Drummond asked, settling down gingerly beside him.

“Of course they knew,” snapped the priest. “I told them.”

“But–then, why weren’t you arrested?”

“Ha!” Father Freise snorted. “I’ll tell you why. Because it wouldn’t look good to arrest a priest for murder, and then have him get up on the witness stand, put his hand on the Bible, and swear that the men he killed were vampires. That’s why. So the archbishop had a meeting with the DA’s office, and they agreed to drop the investigation, so long as the Church kept me out of the way. That’s how I ended up here,”

“Vam–“ Drummond instinctively had started to question the vampire allegation, hut suddenly he decided that was a subject he really didn’t want to get into, just yet. “You mean that you’ve been here, all these years–“

“As a prisoner? Yes,” Father Freise interrupted. “Go ahead and say it, because it’s true.”

“As a prisoner,” Drummond continued, “for nearly twenty years?”

“Yup. A life sentence without parole, Captain Drummond.”

“But–did the Church actually think that they could hide you out here, and that no one would ever ask any questions?”

“Sure they did. And they were almost right, weren’t they?” Father Freise heaved a great sigh. “By the time the police knew I was responsible for eliminating those vampires, Watergate had already crowded the story off the front page and buried it back in the want—ads. Nobody cared, so long as no more killings took place. And with no families demanding that someone be brought to justicewell, it solved a lot of problems, if I just quietly vanished.

“As far as my ‘hiding out’ goes, do you know what sort of place this is?”

Drummond shook his head.

“Well, it’s a very exclusive hospital. It was founded right after the First World War as a place where soldiers, mostly officers, could be brought, who were so horribly mutilated that there was no place left for them in society. Men without faces, arms, or legs, blobs of burned and charred scar tissue that continued to live, despite the gross violation of their bodies.

“The family that donated this estate to the Church did so because their son was so horribly deformed by the war that no hospital in America would admit him. Just the sight of that boy would cause men to faint. I won’t go into all of the details, because there’s no point. Just let me say that their son looked like a badly charred ham with one pale blue eye. I know, because I met him when I first came here. He lived–if that’s the word for it–until about fifteen years ago. He was seventy—eight when he died.”

“If it’s been that terrible, why did you stay?” Drummond asked.

Freise gave him a wan smile. “Despite the fact that you may think me a murderer, Captain, I’m a priest, and this is my parish. I can’t go, even though there are no chains holding me back. These men need me, and I could never desert them.” Freise looked away from Drummond, anguish on his face and a moist glint in his eyes.

Drummond stood up and walked a few paces away from Father Freise, then turned and came back. Either the priest was nuttier than a Hollywood party, or Drummond was about to be caught up in a black abyss of terror. There was only one way to find out.

“Tell me, Father, how did you know those men you killed were vampires?”

Freise shot him a sharp look. “Are you humoring me?”

“No. I’m genuinely interested.”

Freise sighed and looked off into the distance. “I recognized one of them from the war, when I was taken prisoner by the Germans.”

“Tell me about it,” Drummond urged.

“All right. Do you know what triage is?” the priest asked.

“It’s a medical term. Has to do with sorting casualties, separating the critically injured from the less seriously injured ones,” Drummond replied. “Why?”

“Well, when I was captured by the Germans, I was sent to one of their field triage hospitals to help out as a stretcher bearer. Some German doctor would look at the wounded and decide if they were savable or not. The ones beyond help were taken to a little hut behind the generator, where an SS medic would hook them up to a pump and drain out all of their blood.” Father Freise looked out across the neat rows of graves in front of them.

“That’s where I was working–carrying the wounded
into
the hospital, at first–but then hauling mortally wounded young men
away
from the hospital, back to a table where they could give their last drop of blood for the Third Reich. Actually, they say it isn’t that bad a way to die, especially by battlefield standards. The victim simply loses consciousness, fades away ... . “

He shook his head, swallowing noisily, making himself return from the horror of the past to a yet uncertain horror, at last called to account for his deeds.

“Once I realized what was happening, I didn’t carry any more stretchers,” he went on. “I put on my stole and began to give the last rites to the boys they brought out of the hospital. I guess the medical orderly must have been a Catholic, because he didn’t try to stop me.

“Anyway, I was on my knees praying when we were attacked by what I thought was a band of partisans armed with axes and swords. They dragged me and a couple of German medics back into the woods and took us to a castle about a mile away. Inside the castle we were interrogated, and when they found out I was a priest, they asked me to offer Mass.”

Drummond shook his head. He had been listening to Father Freise’s story for only a short while, but he had formed a definite opinion about the priest. He might be mad–and probably was–but he was also sincere. The events he recounted were real, even if they had only happened to him in his imagination.

“Let’s go back to the men who captured you the second time, when you were taken prisoner at the German field hospital,” Drummond said. “You said you thought they were partisans?”

Freise shrugged. “I did at first. But when we got to their castle, I noticed they were all wearing chain mail. Then, when they took us into the great hall, there were these shields on the wallsa couple dozen of them.” He pulled a pen and notepad out of his breast pocket and began to sketch.

“The shields were all painted bright red,” he went on, “with a light blue cross in the center, like this, and gold swastikas in between each of the arms of the cross. They were unusual swastikas, though. The arms were curved, so they’d fit into a circle ... . “

His voice trailed off as he finished drawing one of the swastikas and stared at it, and Drummond glanced at the sketch with some skepticism.

“These symbols were on the walls?” he said, to get the old man talking again.

Freise nodded, still staring at the sketch. “On the shields. I still don’t understand it all. These guys had attacked us like partisans, but when we got back to their headquarters, they had Nazi symbols all over the place. At least I thought they were Nazi symbols, at the time.

“But the leaders, there in the castle, wore long white robes and mantles, almost like a religious community. And the big surprise was yet to come. When they started to question me, they spoke medieval Latin.”

“Latin?”
Drummond murmured.

Father Freise managed a wry, strained smile, as if he still couldn’t fully comprehend what had happened to him all those years ago. “As you can imagine, I was pretty well confused at that point.”

“Yes, I imagine you were.” Drummond tried to sound nonjudgmental, and hoped that Father Freise wouldn’t take offense at his comment.

Father Freise shot Drummond a sidelong glance.

“Anyhow, they asked me who I was, so I told them I was a priest. That seemed to get their leader’s attention, and the next thing I knew, we were all being hustled to the chapel.”

“Excuse me, Father, but you said ‘we.’ Who was there with you?”

“The three Krauts taken prisoner with me, and about a dozen or so of the men in armor.” Father Freise rolled his head from side to side, as if trying to relieve a stiff neck.

“Once we were inside the chapel, I was told to offer Mass, so I did. The Nazis were led off to one side, and our captors started coming forward to receive communion. But before any of them could receive, some SS men crashed into the chapel, and all hell broke loose.”

He grimaced as he relieved the memory.

“The Germans started shooting everything in sight, so I dived for cover behind a pillar. But it wasn’t the massacre you might have expected. The men in armor fought back with swords and axes, and the bullets just didn’t seem to have much effect on them. I don’t know, maybe they couldn’t penetrate the chain mail—and the Germans were being hacked to bits by swords and axes.”

Drummond tried to imagine just what sort of thin—gauge wire loops could stop a 9mm slug traveling at over 1000 feet per second. He couldn’t. A 9mm bullet could punch holes in a car door or shatter a concrete block. This part of Freise’s story didn’t make any more sense than the rest of it had.

“So then what happened?” Drummond asked. “One of the Germans threw a concussion grenade, and for a moment or two everyone was stunned, including me. I couldn’t move, but I could see their officer, just as plain as I can see you. He was lying on the ground next to a stunned knight, and before he got up and ran for the door with the rest of his men, he pulled a knife and cut the other man’s throat–and then he started drinking his blood!” He closed his eyes briefly against the memory. “It–seemed like ages before he got up and dashed for the door.” Father Freise reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. “Damn hay fever.”

“So, how did you escape?” asked Drummond, when the old priest had had a few seconds to recover.

“Well, I waited until all the knights had gone charging out into the courtyard after the Nazis. Then, while they were preoccupied with their wounded, I just walked out. When I got to the edge of the woods that surrounded the castle, I started heading back toward our lines. A patrol found me the next morning, and three days later I was back with my unit.”

Drummond rubbed his eyes with his left hand. He understood now why the LAPD had been willing to let this case slide out the door. The priest was obviously unbalanced, probably from his experiences during the war. Still, he had to find out why Father Freise had chosen those six random victims to die.

“Father, this is all very interesting, but I don’t see how it relates to what happened in Los Angeles. What made you think that the young men you killed were vampires?”

“Like I told you, I recognized one of them from that night at the castle. He was one of the SS orderlies captured with me.” A hint of exasperation tinged Father Freise’s voice. “I was helping out at the local fire station. They were having a blood drive ...”

Drummond felt as if he were looking over the edge of a pit so deep that its bottom was swallowed up in darkness.

“ ... and I had organized the cookies and juice. Anyhow, I went up to give blood, just like anybody else, and the technician drawing blood looked kind of familiar. Well, I’m a priest and I meet a lot of young people, so at first I didn’t give it much thought. But then, when he put the needle in my arm–boy, did it all came back in a flash ...”

FLASH ... Drummond suddenly remembered the blood bank in Vancouver, the missing doctor, and the dead man drained of blood ... .

“ ... the last time I’d seen that young man was in 1944 in the Ardennes.”

“Excuse me, Father, but was that a Red Cross blood drive?” Drummond asked.

“No, it was some private firm out on Whittier Boulevard. Why?” Father Freise looked almost owllike in the late afternoon sun.

“Just curious. Tell me, how did you kill the vampire?” Drummond asked.

“It wasn’t easy. I followed him back to the blood bank, thinking I’d burst in and confront him. Once I got there, though, I realized that alone I didn’t have a chance. I needed help, and I knew that the cops wouldn’t give my story the time of day. I also knew that the Church frowns on executing vampires, to put it mildly, so that my help had to come from somewhere else. So I turned to the only other help I could think of.”

“And who was that?”

Father Freise glanced at the ground, then shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter if I tell you now, because he’s dead. Miguel Gonzales helped me. He was Lupe’s husband. I won’t go into details, because that doesn’t matter, either, but we did fine, until Number Six. That one was on to us, and he–infected Miguel before we realized what was happening. We–finally got Number Six, in the end, but then I–had to deal with Miguel.”

As a cop, Drummond had not thought he could be easily shocked, but he found himself listening aghast to Father Freise’s account.

“Jesus, do you mean you killed Miguel, too?”

Freise swallowed hard and nodded, not looking up. “He begged me to do it, Captain. He knew what was in store for him, if he waited for the curse to take him over. I–couldn’t let that happen to that decent, God—fearing man.