Vampires in the Vatican

Chapter One

Francesca Colonna sighed with pleasure as she removed her shoes and set her feet onto the cool marble floor. Heaven. She had made the mistake of wearing her new heels to work, and they pinched her feet, everywhere, which was bad enough but with the steamy heat and the cranky tourists the day had been appalling. The minutes seemed like hours, the hours seemed like days, as she wobbled past clots of tourists, saying—“scusi, scusi, grazie”—stumbling through the long lines of tourists waiting their turn to enter the Vatican Museum. It had been quite a day, a day full of pilgrims, art historians, gawkers, and college kids from New Jersey.[ Why use a capital C in College kids from new Jersey? James Connor, 7/28/16, 12:13 PM] With the summer’s heat, everyone complained about something. By the afternoon, Francesca retreated into a Roman hauteur as she worked her way through the crowds, weaving back and forth to the archives. Unseen hands pinched her bum five times that afternoon, but now thank God the unseen hands were gone. The museum was officially closed, empty and silent, a bit eerie because every little sound echoed down the halls and back again, as if the building had been abandoned for centuries.

She stood next to the Dying Gaul when she realized that something wasn’t right. A change in the air, a vague feeling of—something. She stopped and cocked her head, listening—but there was only silence.

But Francesca didn’t have to think about it, because she was just about to[

She didn’t see him again. That Friday evening…Shouldn’t that be This Friday evening to show shift to present? James Connor, 7/28/16, 12:20 PM] go home. A tidy woman, before she left the building she reviewed her personal to-do list in her head--stop at the store, get milk, bread, a new bottle of Chianti, some nice prosciutto; take a shower, wash her hair, towel it off, brush it a hundred times, watch the news, do her nails, and then, sit on the apartment balcony, sip a glass of wine, and watch the city go to sleep. Eventually, she would move inside and sit by the window to catch whatever breeze came by, read The French Lieutenant’s Woman, and pray for true love to fall upon her, until she drifted off, the novel still open on her lap.

But not yet, not quite. She still had to straighten her office before leaving—her boss the Monsignore Abandonato was so pedante, so anal—and then she would be free. Still, these next few minutes as she walked to her office were hers. With the crowds gone and only a few guards standing around whispering to one another in the corners or making kissy sounds at her—young men were so annoying—as she passed, she could move through the halls of the museum and visit her favorite sculptures and paintings like old friends. At the end, she drifted into the Sistine Chapel—her favorite place in the world—and stood before Michelangelo’s Last Judgment, staring at it as if it held the secret purpose of life.

This was her routine, and she did it every Friday at the end of the day, as faithfully as prayer. Two weeks before, she had found the Pope himself standing in the middle of the Chapel all alone, head cocked to one side as if listening. As she approached, he shook himself back to the present, and turned to her with a smile. He breathed in deeply, and then sighed.

“I often think that God should never have invented time. No old age. No death. That would be nice. Francesca, would you want to live forever?

Francesca shrugged and wrinkled her nose.

“You’re not sure?”

“Well,” she said,” If I could remain twenty-three forever, and be fabulously wealthy, and not have to pay taxes, it might be alright.”

The Pope laughed. Francesca thought he had a good laugh, and she liked this Pope, which put her in the minority.

“I have cancer, you know.”

“Everyone knows, Holy Father.”

“Pray for me.”

“Every day, Holy Father.”

“You're a Colonna, aren’t you Francesca?”

“Yes, Holy Father.”

“Then we're cousins. That’s nice.” She thought so, too.

She didn’t see him again. That Friday evening, the Chapel was empty, and she could contemplate the fresco in silence. Sunlight filtered through the high windows, illuminating Michelangelo’s twisted bodies, looming over her, with the dead rising from their graves to her left, climbing into the sky, some shooting like rockets and others leaping toward angels standing on clouds, while the angels were reaching down to save them. In the middle was Christ as the sun, cursing the sinners on Francesca’s right, all of them inexorably sinking into the pit. Bit by bit, the silence overwhelmed her and the faces of the condemned pierced her, so that she stood before the painting as if before her own life and wept in little gulping sobs, wondering how she had become so empty. She wondered if Catarina had ever felt this way.

A sound came from the back of the chapel, shuffling feet from the deep shadows. A little girl, about five years old, emerged from the gloom and stood to one side, looking abandoned. She was crying, and she said that she was lost. Going down on one knee to embrace her, Francesca said, “Oh, poor thing, let’s see if we can find your parents.”

“They’re gone,” said the girl.

“They must be frantic looking for you.

“No, they’re not.” The little girl leaned forward as if to share a secret. “You see, they buried me, and left me all alone.”

“They buried you? You must be mistaken.”

“No, they buried me, a long time ago. But I escaped,” the girl whispered.

Francesca could see that she was not right in the head, and wondered if she should call the Gendarmerie. “Maybe we can find someone else to take care of you.”

The girl shook her head.

“How can I help you, then?”

The girl smiled sadly, almost apologetically, then reached out and swiped a razor blade across Francesca’s throat. “You can give me your life,” she said. “You are quite pretty, and have a nice body. I'm sure that someone will make good use of it.”

Francesca fell on her back, gurgling, holding her throat, but the blood leaked through her fingers and pooled on the marble around her head, like a halo. As the world grew dark and as she drifted off toward somewhere else, the last thing she heard was the sound of lapping, like a dog.

*****

The museum guards found her that evening. There was no blood anywhere. They carried the young[ Good opening chapter…leaner. A hint at Francesca’s discontent but not wallowing in it. Ending paragraph makes me want to flip the page in a hurry. James Connor, 7/28/16, 12:24 PM] woman’s body to the city morgue and laid her on an autopsy table. Her mother identified it in between wracking sobs, while Francesca’s twin sister Catarina passed out when she saw the face, pale and bloodless. When he heard of her death, the Pope broke down and wept.

Late in the night, her body disappeared.

Chapter Two

Blood spatter everywhere. There goes dinner, Conor thought. A sweet smell mixed with an iron taint coagulated inside Special Agent Conor O’Brian’s nostrils, bringing up his gorge and leaving a hint of vomit in his mouth. He took a deep breath, let it out, and forced himself to relax, standing tall, hands behind his back. Only those who looked closely at his clasped hands could see the tension he held there. Conor felt the weakness, first in his gut, then his hips, down to his knees; the back of his neck began to sweat, and a pain shot down his left arm. A feeling of overwhelming panic clutched at his throat, so he forced himself to keep breathing in and out as deeply as he could, ignoring the blood smell, and letting his legs, his gut, his arms, his chest and neck relax until the fear unraveled like a knot in a shoelace. He needed something to do with his hands—if only he could start smoking again.

“Jesus, O’Brian, stand down wind would you? Your breath smells like old fruit and cheap wine,” said Meyer, the Agent in Charge. Bob sported a cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and a string tie—non-regulation down to his jockstrap.

“At least I bathe, Bob,” said O’Brian.

“When was that, 1995?”

“Thereabouts.”

Meyer shook his head at the scene. “How high up the International Puke Scale would you put this?”

“Eleven.”

“Out of ten? Is that official?”

“Hell yes. That just came out in a publication by the International Society of Disgusting Things. Crime scenes with blood all over the place get an eleven.”

“Well, you’re the psychobabble expert. You think this guy’s got Mommy issues?”

“Who doesn’t?” Conor said, and then stepped closer to the wall. Blood smears on the paint traced spiral patterns, with a sequence of numbers written in more blood underneath.

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 35, 55, 89, 144…..

“What’s with the numbers?” Meyer said.

“Fibonacci sequence.”

“Gesundheit.”

“Funny. It’s the Fibonacci sequence. It’s a way of mathematically describing spirals, conch shells, stuff like that.”

“So what’s it doing here?”

“I suppose the guy is trying to show us how smart he is. Except one of the numbers is wrong—the 35 should be a 34.”

“Any deep intellectual bullshit significance to that?”

“Yeah. It means he isn’t as smart as he thinks he is.”

Just then, Kelly Hill, a pert blonde who seemed unconcerned by the blood, stepped into the room from the kitchen. “Conor. You’ve got to see this.”

“What about the rest of us?” said Meyer.

“I guess you can come, too.”

“I suppose I’ll just tag along, then, Hill, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all,” she said. Six months on the squad and she already understood the unwritten rules of banter.

The stench inside the kitchen ramped up a couple of notches, until Conor nearly lost his nerve. The sick bastard had taken the bodies, set them in places around the breakfast nook, cut their heads off, and placed them on the table, in salad bowls of blood, their faces turned toward their headless bodies, as if contemplating their headlessness.

“Well, after this I’m going to need therapy for the rest of my life,” said Kelly.

“I charge $300 dollars an hour,” said Conor.

“You think I’d go to you? You’re more screwed up than I am,” said Kelly.

“So what do we have here?” said Meyer.

“Well,” said Conor, “we should check the bodies for pre- or post- mortem sexual activity.”

“Ew,” said Kelly.

“The guy is definitely a sexual sadist, but more than that, he’s a narcissist who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else. White male, 30 to 35, well educated, but from a second tier college. He thinks he’s a genius, something that the rest of the world hasn’t caught on to yet. We should expect a lot of game playing with him, because he’s going to want to show the world how smart he is. And I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he’s been kicked off a few internet sites.”

“You can tell that, can you?” said Meyer.

“I said I wouldn’t be surprised. But this guy is extremely angry about religion. Probably a newbie atheist. He comes from a strict religious upbringing, and this is the way he’s getting back at them.”

“I don’t see where you get that,” said Kelly.

“He’s killed everyone in this house, and the level of damage to the bodies is extreme, and yet done very methodically. He’s raging, but in a controlled way. And I think this has as much to do with religion as it does with sex because of the way the heads seem to be looking back at their bodies, as if they are examining their consciences.”

“God Almighty,” said Meyer. “I’m going to need a bottle of 17 year old scotch and a styrofoam dixie cup. You want to join me, O'Brian?”

Conor took off his glasses and began cleaning the lenses with his tie, which only smeared the dirt around. “I’ve given up drinking for lent.”

“That ended last month.”

“Oh. Well then, make it two bottles. I did learn one thing about this guy, though.”

“Enlighten us, oh Enlightened One.”

“You used “Enlighten” twice in a sentence. Anyway, this fellow isn’t that original. This same thing happened in El Salvador in the ’80’s. Death squads did this same thing to spark terror in the neighborhood. Except that in that case, there was a baby in a high chair.”

“Geez Louise, Conor,” said Kelly. “What kind of sick bastard would do something like that?”

Looking through the smeared lenses, Conor made a face, and then glanced at Kelly and arced an eyebrow. “You should already know by now that human depravity is an abyss with no bottom. The guy who did this probably looks like your next door neighbor.”

“Next time I see my next door neighbor,” said Meyer. “I’m going to shoot him, just to be on the safe side.”

Kelly wrinkled her nose and pointed to a mathematical formula written in blood across a white kitchen cabinet.



“Any ideas?” she said.

“Hunh. Well, well, all this ickiness is beginning to make some sense, finally.”

“In English, please,” said Meyer.

“That’s the formula for the measure of entropy in a closed system.”

“I said English, not Geekish?”

“It’s the measure of chaos in the universe.”

“So now we know this guy’s sort of upbeat. So what does it mean?”

Conor glanced up at Meyer, snorted, and said “he thinks the world is going to hell.”

“Which means?”

“He may not be wrong.”

“Not to rain on your parade, Conor, but take a look in the bedroom,” said Kelly.

“Crap,” said Conor, “I almost got away.”

Kelly led him into the master bedroom, to find another body, an elderly woman with her throat cut. At least her head was still attached.

“Ok, another dead body.”

“Not that,” Kelly said, pointing at the wall behind Conor. He turned to find “GODHELPMEGODHELPMEGODHELPMEGODHELPME” written across the wall in blood.”

“Shit. There goes one theory,” said Conor. “We’re back to square one, I’m afraid.”

“Which theory?” said Kelly. “You’ve spouted at least three so far.”

“The one about religion. The guy may not be an atheist, or he is an atheist and doesn’t want to be, or he’s hyper-religious and feels trapped by his impulses.”

“Well, we can thank the universe for that.” Conor glanced at Kelly, whose eyes glinted with mischief.

“Why would I want to do that? The universe is just a big pile of dust and quarks and clouds of hydrogen gas, all held together by physical laws that make little or no sense. Oh, and black holes that go nowhere.”

“Poor universe. You have no respect.”

“And swamp gas. I forgot swamp gas.”

“Please tell me there’s a bloody fingerprint somewhere around here,” said Meyer, coming into the room behind them.

Kelly shook her head. “No fingerprints anywhere.”

“I hate cases like this. Meticulous nut jobs,” Behind Meyer, Carlos Sevilla, only three weeks on the squad, poked his head into the bedroom and stopped, frozen. His eyes scanned the carnage, and his breath quickened, while his skin slowly turned green.

“You’d better not hurl in here, Carlos. This is a crime scene.”

“Um…Director wants to talk to Conor. Phone.” Carlos ran out the front door, holding his hand over his mouth.

Conor followed after, but as he was leaving the room, Meyer shouted after him. “Don’t forget your knitting.” The rest of the squad laughed.

“It’s cross-stitch, you idiot,” Conor mumbled as he walked through the living room. Outside, he heard Carlos retching in the flower bed beneath the living room window.

“This is why we don’t eat before coming to a crime scene, Carlos. But don’t worry. We’ve all been there. It doesn’t get any better, but we get better at pretending we can handle it.”

Carlos waved Conor away, then buried his face into an empty ceramic pot, and retched again. An agent Conor didn’t recognize stood beside the car and handed him a cellphone.

“Director?” said Conor. “I’m in the middle of something here.” A long pause, the director’s voice a buzz on the phone.

“I don’t understand. Why am I off the case?” Conor ground his teeth.

--

“What other case? There’s no other serial case that I know of.”

--

“Europe? Why do I want to go there?”

—

“Rome? Who asked for me?”

—

“You have to be kidding. Why would the Pope ask for me specifically?”

—

“I’m not that famous. I don’t have my own TV show, or anything.”

—

“How did he even hear about me? Never mind—I know. Damn Malachy.”

—

“My brother, the Jesuit. He and the Pope are buds.”

—

“Naw. He works in the Vatican Archives. I guess he keeps all the Church’s deep dark secrets. Look--Do I have to go?”

—

“Yeah, OK. I’ll catch the plane tomorrow. Any chance I could get use of the G5?”

—

“I had to ask. Yeah. OK. You know, you owe me one.”

—

Conor laughed. “Ok, Ok, I owe you one less.”

Conor shut the phone off, then shook his head. Damn Malachy. Damn Malachy. Damn, Damn, Damn!