Interrogation in Room #3

Meet a vampire hunter, who's new to the game, and about the face the unexpected consequences of his actions... You can listen to this story and more on the Bedtime Stories for Insomniacs fiction podcast available on all podcast apps and Audible.

“Tell me again why you killed all those people,” I said to the nervous little man sitting across the steel table from me, his wrists and ankles in shackles.

Freddy sucked in a deep breath, then turned his gaze to me and replied, “Because. They were vampires.”

I nodded. “Right.” This was starting out to be a bad day.

Chains rattled against the metal chair as Freddy sat back and shook his head. “Why do you keep asking me the same question if you’re not going to believe the answer,” he asked.

I mulled that one over.

It was a standard interrogation technique, to keep on asking the same question over and over again. The repetition ate away at the subject’s resistance, and eventually — so the theory went — he would be so frustrated he would utter the truth. Usually, when I tried this tactic, the answers would get gradually more detailed. But with Freddy, he had answered the question consistently.

Because they were vampires.

“So,” I began, trying a different approach, “you believe in vampires.”

“Of course I do,” Freddy admitted. “I kill them.”

“Is that your job?”

“No one pays me to do it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You’re just an amateur vampire killer.”

Freddy rolled his eyes. “It’s not something you do for money.”

“Then why do you do it?” I asked. “Help me understand, Freddy.” I picked up the folder that was sitting on the corner of the table and opened it.

One by one I laid out the photos inside in front of Freddy. Crime scene photos of people with wooden stakes driven through their hearts. “They look like ordinary people to me, Freddy. Aren’t they supposed to turn to dust, or shrivel up into a mummy or something.”

“Evidently not,” he replied.

“You know what I think?”

Freddy shrugged.

“I think maybe you had some other motive to kill these people. Maybe they looked at you funny, stole money from you, got you fired from your job. Then you convinced yourself they were actually vampires, maybe a little voice in your head told you so, and you realized you could be the hero, and you drove those stakes through their hearts and killed them for no other reason than revenge and your own glorification.”

He looked at me, one eye black and almost swollen shut, the other one drooping from fatigue. “They were vampires. That’s how you kill vampires. It’s really not that difficult to grasp,” he said.

I sat back, staring at the unremarkable man sitting across from me.

Freddy had been killing “vampires” for several months. Of course the press had a field day with the string of gruesome murders, the victims of which had sharpened sticks pounded into their chests, and he was immediately dubbed, “The Vampire Killer.” He had been amazingly good at evading the police. This was mostly because even though we found plenty of fingerprints and DNA at the crime scenes, Freddy had never been arrested, been in the military or worked at a job where they required his fingerprints to be taken. So, when we ran the evidence through all the available databases, it came back as unidentified.

He didn’t own a car, so there was no vehicle to trace, no partial license plate caught by a nearby security camera, nor were any parking tickets issued at an expired meter near the crime scenes.

The one break we did have was an eye witness. An old woman who had been walking her Bichon Frise early one morning outside what would later be discovered to be scene of the third killing. She saw a man across the street from her, and called out a friendly, “Good morning.” He looked at her for only a moment, but from that glimpse, she was able to help a police artist create a sketch.

However, it wasn’t an anonymous tip generated by the plea for assistance that appeared on the local newscasts that broke the case. Nor was it an eagle-eyed patrolman who spotted him passing by on the street. Four more bodies were found, their hearts impaled by wooden spikes before Freddy made his big mistake.

They all do, you know. Even the smartest criminals do something stupid, or trust someone they shouldn’t, or get caught by some quirk of fate in a situation from which there is no escape.

In Freddy’s case, it was an argument with a bus driver.

Since he didn’t have a car, he used public transportation to track his victims and then make his getaway from the murders. He didn’t use a bus pass like most regular commuters, he dropped the exact change in the old-fashioned mechanical farebox. On one ride — totally unconnected to his string of killings, he was on his way back from picking up a pair of shoes he had resoled — he dropped the coins in the box as usual, but the driver informed him he was a dime short.

Freddy checked his pockets, but came up empty. He was in the habit of counting out the change he needed for his bus trips to the penny and placing the coins in his left front pocket, never bringing more than he needed. He looked at the farebox. He could see the coins at the bottom — they were the only ones there — and they added up precisely to the fare required. He tried to get the driver to count the money, but the woman behind the wheel of the bus was stubborn, and relied solely on the amount shown in red LED numerals at the top of the farebox that said he was ten cents short.

Freddy boarded the bus regardless, but the driver refused to budge until he got off. He demanded his money back, and the driver handed him a form he could fill out and mail in. He did not take that well. He ripped it up and sat down in one of the empty seats. It didn’t take long for some of the other passengers to start getting mad that they were going to be late for work, or miss their transfer. One particular man got physical, trying to pry Freddy’s hands from the iron grip he had on the pole he was sitting next to. Another passenger joined in the effort to remove Freddy from the bus, but he resisted mightily, kicking out at his assailants, shouting and screaming, demanding the driver drive.

Instead, she called the police.

Freddy and three of the other passengers were arrested for creating a disturbance. He had gotten the worst of it, his nose was bleeding, one eye was starting to swell shut and he was walking with a limp. So the police at the station where he and the others were taken were surprised that he didn’t want to file any charges.

It was actually a woman who happened to be in the station after being arrested for solicitation who was the one who pointed at him and said, “Hey, that’s the guy from the TV. The Vampire Killer.”

Someone dug up the sketch that had been distributed around the city and compared it to Freddy’s battered and bruised face. He didn’t have any identification on him, but he did have the receipt from the cobbler who repaired his shoes — which had his address on it. Once his fingerprints were matched to the ones that had been obtained at the crime scenes, it didn’t take long to get a search warrant for his apartment.

It was there they found a supply of wooden stakes, a two pound sledge hammer, several cameras and photos of all the people Freddy had killed and dozens more that we assumed were next on his list.

And now he was sitting here, under the harsh glare of the florescent lights, one of the most prolific serial killers this city had ever known.

All five feet and three inches of him.

There was a knock at the door.

I gathered the photos and slipped them back into the folder and exited the interrogation room through the door that led to the adjacent observation room.

“How’s it going?” a burly man, nearly six inches taller than myself asked. He was John Johnson, my partner, John-John for short — which didn’t make any sense, since you could just call him John and save yourself the extra John.

“I don’t think we’re going to get any more out of him,” I responded. “He insists it was self-defense. They were vampires. It was them or him.”

John-John laughed. “Yeah, either he’s smart enough to start laying down an insanity defense or we need to make a reservation for rubber room.”

“He’s sticking to his story,” I told him.

“I know, I’ve been watching on the video feed,” he said.

“It’s working today?” I asked.

“Yeah, I kinda wish the camera was still on the fritz,” John-John said, disappointed. “I’d love to have five minutes with him with no one watching.”

I nodded. “He is completely unrepentant. And I hear he nearly took down those three guys on the bus.”

“Not if I’d been there,” John-John replied, staring at the grainy image of Freddy, which made him look even more harmless than his slight frame and balding pate conveyed.

I reached over and pounded the dark gray metal box next to the monitor that recorded everything happening in interrogation room three.

The screen went blank.

I guess they hadn’t completely fixed the loose connection that made room three’s video so notoriously unreliable. It wasn’t surprising, I don’t think they had updated the system since the eighties.

John-John gave me a conspiratorial nod.

“I’m going to check on something,” I told him. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He opened the door and entered the interrogation room.

I exited the observation room — more like a closet, really — and made my way across the station to the evidence room. Chuck was sitting behind the thin wire fence that safeguarded all the various incriminating weapons, electronic devices and drugs collected for ongoing cases.

“What’s up,” he asked as I approached.

“I need one of the stakes from the Vampire Killer case, John-John wants to use it as a prop for the interrogation.”

“Really?” he said, somewhat surprised as he got up and crossed over to a nearby shelf and removed a sharpened wooden stake about as big around as his wrist from a box. “I didn’t think he went in for that psychological stuff, he’s more of a ‘tell me what I want to know of I’ll beat the crap out of you’ kind of guy.”

I laughed. “I guess I must be rubbing off on him,” I answered.

Chuck handed me the stake, I signed for it and offered a quick salute to thank him.

I twirled it in my hand as I made my way back to the interrogation room, whistling, nodding to the other officers I passed.

I reached room three, and let myself into the observation side. I checked that the surveillance system was still showing nothing but static, then opened the door that connected to the interrogation room.

John-John had Freddy in a choke hold, screaming at him, “What were these people to you? Why did you kill them? Tell me, or I swear, I’ll break your neck!”

Freddy looked at me, pleadingly. “Help,” he said weekly.

John-John let loose his grip on the smaller man’s neck. “Has it been five minutes already?” he asked, checking his watch. Then he saw the stake in my hand, and shot me an inquisitive look in that not-ever-subtle way he had.

I smiled, tapping the pointy stick against my hand like a baseball player testing the balance of a bat.

He walked around the table to where I was and leaned in close, speaking in a low voice. “Are we going to do the good cop-bad cop thing? ’Cause I’m usually the bad cop,” he said, eyeing the stake in my hand.

“Yes, you usually are,” I said.

Then I took the stake and plunged it deep into his chest.

It went in easily. Although I didn’t look it, I was incredibly strong.

John-John’s face bore an expression of surprise as he fell to the ground, blood gurgling out of the corner of his mouth as the life drained from him.

I looked at Freddy.

He stared at me, wide-eyed — at least the eye that wasn’t swollen shut. “You’re… you’re a…”

He couldn’t seem to finish the sentence he wanted to say, but I suspected it ended with something like “one of them,” or “a… a… a vampire!”

“Don’t feel sorry for John-John,” I said. “He truly was a terrible policeman, and a bit of a racist and a homophobe as well. A lot of the people in this station will quietly thank you for killing him.”

“But I didn’t kill him,” Freddy protested. He looked up at the camera. “Help, help! Somebody help me!” he tried to shout, but his voice was hoarse and weak from his larynx being crushed by John-John’s massive bicep. Then he noticed that the little red light that indicated the camera was recording was no longer lit. He shot a glance back to me and swallowed nervously.

“That’s right,” I told him. “Nobody’s going to hear you.”

“Why?” he asked. “Why are you doing this?”

“Why did you kill my friends?” I asked.

“Your… your friends?” he asked back.

“Come now, certainly that conspiratorial mind of yours has put two and two together by now. I’m impressed that you were able to find them, figure out what they were. You must tell me how you did it,” I said.

He shrugged. “I… I just get this feeling about some people, it’s kind of like a sixth sense, I guess. But I always make sure I’m right. I follow them, see if they kill anyone. They always seem to be weaker right after they feed.”

I nodded. “Yeah, you would think it would be the opposite, but a good feast of blood makes you kind of logy.”

Freddy looked around, trying to find any means of escape or a way to fight back. But his hands and feet were shackled not only together, but fastened to an eye bolt embedded in the concrete floor.

I pulled the keys out of John-John’s pocket and then opened the lock that connected Freddy’s chains to the floor. Then, as he stared at me in amazement, I unlocked the cuffs around his wrists.

It was a reckless, chancy move, but Freddy made a dash for the door. His feet got tangled and he fell directly on top of John-John. He scrambled to a sitting position, slipping in the small pool of blood surrounding the body.

The smell of it made my own blood boil with desire. I could feel my incisors sliding out of my jaw to their full length. My vision became sharper as in the throws of “the bloodlust I could now see ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. My hearing became more acute as well, and the rapid pounding of Freddy’s heartbeats rang in my eardrums.

Freddy slid awkwardly toward the door.

“You’ll get caught,” he tried to warn me. “You’re in a police station. You’ll never get away with this.”

“Get away with what? When I got here, I found the two of you dead. For some reason, John-John decided it would be a good idea to uncuff you, you got a hold of the stake was planning on intimidating you with, and killed him.” I shrugged. “Maybe you were convinced he was a vampire, too. But before he died, he managed to take you out. He’ll probably get a medal.”

“Please, don’t,” he begged. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“It’s not about that, Freddy,” I said. “You killed my kind. And it appears you have an ability to detect us that most humans do not. I cannot allow you to share that with anyone.”

“I won’t,” he promised. “I’ll plead guilty, I’ll go to prison, I’ll never tell a soul.”

“Like I said, it’s not just about telling anyone. It’s like if a man-eating lion was terrorizing your apartment building. You wouldn’t trust it to not eat you, you’d have to kill it. You’ve been, sadly, a very effective vampire killer. I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that your lineage goes back to Van Helsing. But that’s neither here nor there. The means by which you are able to do what you do is irrelevant to the fact that even though I’m not technically human, I do have feelings.

“And you really hurt them by killing all my friends.”

I picked up Freddy by the front of his shirt, lifting him up off the ground.

He closed his eyes tight as I brought him close to me, until his neck was inches from my salivating mouth.

I bit deep, and was immediately gratified by the rush of warm, salty blood that flowed into my mouth. I swallowed only small bit. I didn’t want his bloodless body to raise questions.

Then I tore a chunk of flesh from his throat and dropped Freddy back to the ground next to John-John. I took the bloody piece of skin, muscle and sinew from my mouth and placed it in my dead partner’s. It was an awkwardly staged scene, but good enough to fool the dolts I worked with.

There was blood on my clothes, but I could explain that by being in shock when I discovered the bloody scene, and careless when I checked to see if — despite the evidence to the contrary — John-John was still alive.

I mussed up my hair, loosened my tie and put my hand on the door knob.

“Help, help,” I screamed at the top of my lungs as I opened the door. “Somebody call an ambulance. Quick! Help!”

I could taste the blood that still covered my lips and chin. I licked away most of it as I felt my fangs retract, then cleaned off the rest with the back of my jacket sleeve just as several uniformed officers came running around the corner.

I fell against the wall and slid down to the ground, feeling the fatigue that followed a feeding — despite not taking my fill. I waved weakly at the door to interrogation room three.

They entered the room, gasping in horror as more officers arrived.

One of them was kind enough to check on me.

“I’m fine,” I assured her, “it’s not my blood.”

But it sure does taste good, I wanted to say, trying my best not to smile.

A vampire killer and a crappy partner, two birds with one stone — or rather, stake.

Guess it turned out not to be a bad day after all.

You can find out more about the author, his novels, fiction podcast and more at RichHosek.com.