“Firemen and cops don’t know how to take blood,” Green Scrubs said.

  “Anyone can learn,” Yellow Scrubs replied. “There are a lot of people who work here that don’t normally draw blood. Physical therapists. Pharmacists. Social workers. Dieticians. Cafeteria staff. Custodial staff.”

  “It could be a patient.” Polka Dots had finally spoken up. She was in her thirties, tall and athletic. Her eyes had narrowed.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked.

  “St. Erasmus does background checks on all new employees,” she said. “Anyone running around sucking blood has likely been arrested before. HR would have flagged it before they were hired.”

  “They didn’t do one on me,” said Green Scrubs. “I’ve worked here for seven years.”

  I made a note of that. “When did the Destiny Drac start making the news?”

  “Maybe seven years ago,” said Yellow Scrubs. “Just after you got hired, Doris.”

  Yellow Scrubs and Green Scrubs shared a laugh. Polka Dots stayed quiet and aloof.

  “So do any of you have theories?” I asked. “Ideas? Suspects?”

  Green Scrubs shrugged. “Maybe the dude thinks he’s a mosquito.”

  “Only female mosquitos drink blood,” Yellow Scrubs replied.

  Green Scrubs shrugged again. “Fine. Dude thinks he’s a vampire bat. Or a vampire. Or this is all rumors and malarky. A collective delusion. Or some fun to make the town more interesting. Like the hodag in Rhinelander, Wisconsin. Or the skunk ape in Florida. Or UFOs in Roswell.”

  “Maybe we need to start selling Destiny Drac tee-shirts,” Yellow Scrubs suggested.

  They both laughed.

  “So what kind of movie is this gonna be?” Green Scrubs asked. “Will you need extras?”

  “I can’t reveal anything,” I lied. “Non-disclosure agreement.”

  They nodded like that made sense.

  I thanked them for their time, then headed for the elevator to try another floor. Polka Dots, Nurse Shelby, caught up to me after I’d pressed the call button.

  “There’s a patient in the LTC ward,” she said. “Sigmund Manx. Room 455, bed B. He talks about the Destiny Drac a lot.”

  LTC? I hadn’t heard the term, but could guess. “Long-term care? What’s wrong with him?”

  She barked a laugh, which sounded like one of those purse dogs yipping. “What isn’t wrong with him? APS. DVT. TIA. SIB so he’s strapped down.”

  “I don’t understand the AS.”

  “AS?”

  “The alphabet soup.”

  That provoked a deep sigh. “APS is antiphospholipid syndrome. A blood clotting disorder. That leads to DVT, deep vein thrombosis, and TIA, transient ischemic attacks. Lots of blood clots and mini strokes. He has vascular dementia so bad he hallucinates. That leads to SIB, self-injurious behavior. He’s admitted here so often that the administration practically gave him a permanent room.”

  “You think he could be the Destiny Drac?”

  “He’s old. Bedridden most of the time with compression leggings. But he babbles about the Destiny Drac sometimes. Maybe he’s the Drac. Or maybe he knows something.”

  “Thanks, Shelby. Why didn’t you mention this in front of Doris and Doug?”

  She leaned in close, and I could smell her halitosis through her mask. “I don’t trust either of them. To an outsider, Destiny seems like a peaceful little town. But it’s got a deep rot that runs through it. You hear the recent news? The serial killers and cannibals?”

  “I heard.”

  Not only had I heard, I lived through it, with my family. And McGlade.

  “You need to be careful. Even the cops here are rotten.”

  “Thanks for the warning.”

  The elevator doors opened, and I rolled in, heading for long-term care to talk to Mr. Manx.

  FLESH

  The freezer had a single, lonely steak left. Protected by plastic wrap, and then aluminum foil, to prevent freezer burn.

  But they never last long enough to get freezer burn.

  The man known as Flesh put a cast iron pan on the stovetop, added some olive oil, and turned on the burner.

  Do I want some veggies with my meat?

  He searched his brain for an answer, but couldn’t find a choice that pleased him.

  I can’t make decisions.

  Is it because of grief?

  Anger?

  Hunger?

  He didn’t know. And didn’t pursue the thought. He was tired. Almost as if he was working two jobs.

  Which, in a way, I am.

  His cell phone buzzed, and he checked the text.

  A message from Blood.

  have u decided?

  He pondered how that not only applied to their current dilemma, but also with his meal.

  NOT YET, he replied. DO YOU HAVE THE TIMES?

  While waiting for a response, he unwrapped the steak.

  mcglade is tomorrow at 6am. jack at 9. phin at 12.

  Hmm. The surgeries were spaced far enough apart that one of them could always be on guard. But maybe tomorrow evening, when they’re all recovering and high on pain meds…

  THE GIRL? he texted.

  still waiting for covid test. lab is crazy backed up. hyd?

  How you doin’? Blood is a sweetheart to ask.

  GOOD. SAD. I MAY VISIT. HYD?

  sad 2. c u later?

  He considered it. MAYBE.

  Flesh placed the steak on the heated pan, listening to it sizzle. He went to the spice rack on the counter and stared at his options, trying to remember what kind of meat it was.

  Hispanic man. Mid-fifties. A landscaper. Gunshot wound to the head.

  He chose accordingly; chili powder, allspice, salt and pepper, fresh cilantro and marjoram, and a bit of epazote for earthiness.

  I respect your heritage and culture, señor. Thank you for nourishing me.

  also, Blood texted, they’re asking about me.

  Flesh used tongs to flip the meat over. A good sear on both sides would seal in the juices. Then he texted back.

  THAT’S WHAT WE WANT. He searched his mind for the proper Sun Tzu quote, and came up with two. KNOW YOUR ENEMY AS YOU KNOW YOURSELF. ALL WARFARE IS BASED ON DECEPTION. FABFROD.

  Flesh sniffed the steak, the mingling odors delighting his senses, and decided he did want vegetables. He checked the cupboard, selected some canned carrots, and poured them into a microwavable bowl. He added salt, cumin, and a dash of red pepper flakes, and nuked on medium for three minutes.

  deleting texts. i’ll keep u posted. fabfrod.

  Flesh replied with a thumbs-up emoji, then he also deleted the messages.

  He plated the carrots and the steak, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and sat on a stool at his breakfast bar. Then he reached for his box.

  A $350 set of Japanese Yasuidesu knives. Kagoshima steel with a Rockwell hardness of 61, full tang, pakkawood handles. The precious gift included a 7-inch nakiri vegetable knife, an 8.5-inch slicing knife, a 5-inch utility knife, two 4.5-inch steak knives, and a Toishi whetstone to keep them all razor sharp.

  He selected a steak knife and glided through the meat, which had been cooked perfectly. Bloody rare, cool in the center.

  Flesh cut a bite-sized cube, and popped it into his mouth.

  Chewy. A perfect Maillard reaction crust on the outside, but a cold and jiggly middle. Lots of stringy fibers. Which made sense; this had been a loin cut, and there were strong muscles in the thigh.

  I should have tenderized it. Would have been better.

  The taste was also off. Freezer burn, perhaps, despite his precautions.

  But another culprit was more likely.

  This cut is from a three-day-old corpse. Refrigerated in the hospital morgue so it didn’t spoil, and then frozen after he butchered some select parts.

  But it’s not fresh meat.

  When was the last time I had fresh meat?

  Been a while.

  Flesh considered his culinary eccentricities.

  Unlike Blood, who had some sort of medical condition—perhaps physical, perhaps psychological—Flesh’s tastes were rooted in a something far easier to understand.

  You are what you eat.

  He’d learned cannibalism at a young age, and saw nothing wrong or weird about it.

  Some kids grew up on farms learning to slaughter chickens and hogs.

  Some kids learned to hunt deer and duck.

  Some kids ate supermarket pre-packaged crap infused with corn syrup and chemicals.

  Some kids ate other kids.

  Part nature, part nurture. No medical component to it.

  Other than addiction.

  When I go without human meat for more than a few days, I get irritable and distracted.

  I don’t sleep well.

  I lack energy.

  That could be psychosomatic. Or it could be nutritional.

  But I’m only at my best when I eat people.

  Flesh glanced at all the uniforms hanging in his closet, then closed his eyes, trying to picture the man who’d given his life for this meal. An itinerant migrant. No one ever claimed the body. Only Flesh and Blood came to the unceremonious cremation. Burned in a cheap carboard box provided by the State of Colorado. The closest thing to a funeral that the man had received.

  Me eating him was likely the best thing he’d ever done in his life.

  What was his name? Pedro? Paco? Something starting with P, I think.

  After a while, you forget their names. He’d been in the freezer for a while.

  And now the freezer is empty.

  But according to The Art of War, opportunities multiply as they are seized.

  The arrival of Jack, Phin, Harry, and Sam had been catastrophic for Flesh. Tragic. Frightening.

  But also fortuitous.

  Yes, they are dangerous.

  Yes, they might learn our secrets. They might hurt us. They might lead us to prison. They might kill us.

  But they are also fresh meat.

  And when was the last time I ate a child?

  Children were the most delicious. Every Grimm’s fairy tale knew that.

  Tender. Sweet. Melt-in-your-mouth juicy.

  You could taste the uncorrupted innocence.

  As Flesh’s precious Sun Tzu stated: never venture, never win.

  There was also another famous general whose words applied to the current situation.

  “An army marches on its stomach.”

  Thank you, Napoleon Bonaparte.

  He got a phone alert that a customer was ringing the doorbell to the shop, beneath his apartment.

  Couldn’t they read the OUT TO LUNCH sign hanging in the door?

  I’m on my lunch break. Some things are more important than making money.

  Flesh finished the last bite of Pedro or Paco or whatever his name was, drained the rest of his beer, and after a wipe and a rinse he began to sharpen his Yasuidesu steak knife on the whetstone.

  Though he’d just eaten, Flesh began to salivate.

  Thinking about fresh young girl meat.

  JACK

  I wish I could visit you.”

  Through the cell phone, my mother’s voice sounded weak and far away.

  “Me too, Mom.” I didn’t want to talk about pandemic restrictions, so I changed the subject. “Pets okay?”

  “They’re fine. Your dog is a sweetheart. Your cat is the devil. How’s my granddaughter? Can I talk to her?”

  I glanced at Sam, who was immersed in her cell phone, earbuds stuck in her head and cranked loud enough for me to hear the pings and zaps of her videogame.

  “She’s sleeping,” I lied.

  Sam had been through a lot, and she needed some time to just zone out and be a kid. My mother would ask her all sorts of questions that would refresh recent bad memories. Better to give Sam another day to chill out.

  “You sound stressed, Jacqueline.”

  I also needed another day to chill out.

  “I’m okay. Just a little pain. I’m managing.” I was on enough opiates to stagger an angry bison. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  “This call shouldn’t be about me, dear. I’m not the one stuck in the hospital because a pair of maniacs tried to kill me and my family. The Goodalls, they were brother and sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My age?”

  “Your age.”

  A weird kind of proof that you shouldn’t ever underestimate the elderly.

  “You’d think people my age would know how to act reasonably. But it seems like no one is acting reasonably these days. The delivery man this morning, he dropped off some toilet paper—it’s so nice to be able to get toilet paper again after the supply shortage—and I didn’t have any paper cash on me to tip him so I went into my coin purse and found four dollars in quarters, and he looked at me and said, really sarcastically, ‘Thanks, boomer.’ What did that mean?”

  “The younger generations are resentful that the baby boomers still seem to be running the world,” I said.

  “But a four dollar tip is a decent tip.”

  “He probably resented counting the change. Or carrying it around. Some people don’t like pockets that jingle.”

  “US currency is US currency. What kind of person gets snippy because they don’t like denominations?”

  I squinted at the time on my phone. “I gotta go, Mom.”

  “Go where?”

  “The bathroom,” I lied. Apparently lying to my mother was becoming the new norm. “I’ll call you tomorrow. You can talk to Sam then.”

  “Okay, give her a kiss from Grandma.”

  I hung up, and then I detached the needleless IV connector from the catheter hub stuck in my good arm.

  The pain got worse almost immediately.

  Phin had left to interrogate the hospital staff, and I had some video chats set up. I told McGlade I was leaving, not sure he heard me because he was as captivated by his cell phone as my daughter was. I went into the drawer on the bedside table, which had a plastic bag full of my personal belongings, including the clothes I arrived in. The drawer didn’t lock, which meant it wasn’t a safe place to keep things, but the only valuables I had were my tablet, cell phone, and wedding ring, and I had all of those on me. I didn’t usually carry a purse, my keys and wallet were still at my house, and I had worn cheap gym shoes to the hospital rather than the designer footwear I used to rock in my younger days.

  I found my boyshort panties, tugged them out of the bag, and spent an awkward minute putting them on one-handed. Then I levered myself out of bed, adjusted my ugly hospital gown, and padded into the hallway.

  Every step, every movement, ignited the multiple fractures in my arm. I had surgery scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. St. Erasmus wanted to make sure I could one day sign my name on a check to pay these hospital bills.

  I sloughed through the hospital hallway, dragging ass and feeling out of place, every masked face I encountered reminding me that Covid was still hanging on, and I was trapped in a building filled with pandemic victims.

  Not the ideal place to hideout from a virus.

  At the same time, I had a small tingle of purpose wiggling in my brain.

  I’d left policework behind because I’d witnessed too much violence, which took a psychological toll, and been involved in too much violence, which took a physical toll. I quit partly for my family, but mostly for myself to retain the shreds of sanity and humanity I had left.

  But there was an aspect of detective work that I realized I’d missed. Actually being a detective.

  One of the biggest draws of law enforcement for me was solving crimes. Putting the clue together to figure out the puzzle. That “a-ha!” moment when all of the interviews and evidence came together, leading to a collar. The bad guy arrested, and world made a tiny bit better, because of my efforts.

  I headed for a private consultation room that I’d managed to reserve, my tablet computer in my good hand, ready to video conference with some of Blood’s previous victims. I’d set up the interviews earlier, using regular old voice calls. Talking to victims on the phone was so 2018. But webcams and video chats were the next best thing to being in the same room. After all, communication was 55 percent visual, according to those folks who studied that sort of thing.

  So I felt a little like I was back in action. Not excited, but lucid and composed. It shouldn’t be too emotionally draining. I wasn’t dealing with homicide witnesses, or the relatives of the dead. While these people no doubt endured some trauma, I didn’t expect there to be any crying or overwhelming fear.

  So, naturally, the first person I called proved me wrong.

  After propping up my tablet camera on a coffee table and sitting in an overstuffed chair, as comfortable as I could get considering the circumstances, I invited the first victim name on my interview list into a video chat, and went full-on face-to-face with barely controlled terror.

  Her name was Marjorie Calhoun, and she was a bit older than I was, and her visage was a Halloween mask of fright. A Black woman, high cheekbones, hair cropped short. Pretty, if not for the abject terror.

  “Hello, Ms. Calhoun. My name is Jack. Thanks for speaking with me.”

  Her voice matched the drama in her face. “Why are you making me relive the worst night of my life?” she wailed, her cheeks wet with tears.

  Maybe I didn’t miss being a detective as much as I’d thought. I glanced down at my cell in my good hand, checking my notes.

  Her visit from Blood happened over five years ago. I guess she was still healing. But who am I to say that fear has a statute of limitations?

  “Can you tell me what happened, Ms. Calhoun?” I used soothing tones. “We’re trying to stop this person. Before they hurt anyone else.”

  She chewed her lower lip, her eyes darting back and forth.

  Accessing bad memories.

  “Please call me Marjorie.”

  “Can you walk me through that night, Marjorie?”

  “I… I was resting. I’d had hip replacement surgery a week earlier. Osteoarthritis. My husband was at the pharmacy, refilling my pain meds. I was in one of those half-asleep states, you know? Where you kind of know what’s going on, but not fully?”