She looked over at me. She had something here, something good. "Here's the kicker, Alex. According to my source, the woman believes her attackers were vampires."

We met with Gloria Dos Santos at the police station in the Brentwood section of L.A. It was a one-story concrete building, about as nondescript as a post office. Detective Peter Kim joined us in a small interview room, which was about six by five feet, soundproof, with padded walls. Kim was slender, around six feet, in his late twenties. He dressed well and seemed more like an up-and-coming Los Angeles business executive than a policeman to me.

Gloria Dos Santos obviously knew Kim, and they didn't seem too fond of each other. She called him "Detective Fuhrman," and she used the name over and over until Kim told her to "can it" or he would lock her the hell up.

Dos Santos wore a short black dress, high black boots, leather wristbands. There were about a dozen earrings in strategic locations on her body. Her frizzy black hair was piled high, but some also cascaded down to her shoulders.

She was only an inch or two over five feet and had a hard face. Her lashes were thick with mascara, and she used purple eye shadow. She looked to be in good physical shape — like all the other victims so far.

She stared at Kim, then at me, and finally at Jamilla Hughes. She shook her head and smirked. She didn't like us, which was fine — I didn't much like her either.

She sneered. "Can I smoke in this rattrap? I'm going to smoke like it or not. If you don't like it, then I'm going the hell home."

"So smoke," Kim said. "But you're not going home under any fucking circumstances." He took out some David ranch-style sunflower seeds and started to eat them. Kim was a strange boy himself.

Dos Santos lit up a Camel and blew out a thick stream of smoke in Kim's face.

"Detective Fuhrmanknows everything that I know. Why don't you just get it all from him? He's brilliant, y'know. Just ask him about it. Graduated with some cumma honors from UCLA."

"There are a few things we aren't clear about," I said to her. "That's why we came all the way from San Francisco to see you. Actually, I came from Washington, D.C."

"Long trip for nothing, Shaft," she said. Gloria Dos Santos had a zinger for every occasion. She wiped her hand over her face a few times as if she were trying to wake herself up.

"You're obviously high as a kite," Jamilla cut in. "That doesn't matter to us. Relax, girl. These men who attacked you hurt you pretty bad."

Dos Santos snorted. "Pretty bad? They broke two ribs, broke my arm. They knocked me down 'bout six times. Fortunately, they knocked me right down a goddamn hill — side of a mountain, actually. I started rolling. Got up. Ran my ass off."

"The initial report said that you didn't see either of them very well. Then you claimed that they were in their forties or fifties."

She shrugged. "I don't know. It was foggy. That's an impression I had. Earlier that night, I went to the Fang Club on West Pico. It's the only place where you can meet real vampires and live to tell about it. So they say. I was going to a lot of Goth clubs back then — Stigmata, Coven Thirteen, Vampiricus over in Long Beach. I worked at Necromane. What's Necromane?" she asked, as if it were a question we would want answered. She was right. "Necromane is a boutique for people who are really into the dead. You can buy real human skulls there. Fingers, toes. A full human skeleton if that's your thing."

"It's not," Jamilla said. "But I've been to a shop like that in San Francisco. It's called the Coroner."

The girl looked at her contemptuously. "So I'm fucking impressed? You must be very cool. You must live right on the edge."

I spoke again. "We're trying to help you. We..."

She cut me off. "Bullshit. You're trying to help yourselves. You've got another big case. Those kinky murders in San Francisco, right? I can read, man. You could care less about Gloria Dos Santos and her problems. I got lots of them. More than you know. Who gives a shit, right?"

"Two people were killed in Golden Gate Park. It was a massacre. Did you read that? We think it might be the same men who attacked you," I told her.

"Yeah, well, let me tell you something you better get straight. The two men who attacked me were vampires! Got that? I know this is impossible for you to wrap your little minds around, but there are vampires. They set themselves apart from the human world. That means they aren't like you!

"Two of them almost killed me. They were hunting in Beverly Hills. They kill people every fucking dayin L.A.! They drink their blood. They call it feeding. They chew on their bones like it's KFP — that's Kentucky Fried People, chumps. I can see you don't believe me. Well, believeme."

The door to the interview room opened quietly. A uniformed patrolman popped in and whispered something to Detective Kim.

Kim frowned and looked at us, then at Dos Santos. "There was a killing on Sunset Boulevard a short time ago. Someone was bitten and then hanged at one of the better hotels."

Gloria Dos Santos's face twisted horribly. Her eyes grew small and very angry. She flew into a rage, started to scream at the top of her voice. "They followed you here, you assholes! Don't you get it? They followed you! Oh, my God, they know I talked to you. Oh, Jesus Christ, they'll get me. You just got me killed!"

I always liked working tough murder cases with Kyle Craig, so I was glad that he would be joining Jamilla Hughes and me in Los Angeles later that day. I was surprised, however, when I saw Kyle already at the murder scene in Beverly Hills when we arrived. The body had been found at the Chateau Marmont, the hotel where John Belushi had overdosed and died.

The hotel looked like a French castle and rose seven stories over the Sunset Strip. As I entered the lobby, I noticed that everything looked to be authentic 1920s, but dated rather than antique. Supposedly a studio boss once told the actor William Holden, "If you have to get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont."

Kyle met us at the door of the hotel room. His dark hair was slicked back, and it looked as if he'd gotten a little sun. Unusual for Kyle. I almost didn't recognize him.

"This is Kyle Craig, FBI," I told Jamilla. "Before I met you, he was the best homicide investigator I ever worked with."

Kyle and Jamilla shook hands. Then we followed him into the hotel room. Actually, it was a hillside bungalow: two bedrooms, a living room with a working fireplace. It had its own private street entrance.

The crime scene was as depressingly bad as the others. I recalled something typically pessimistic that a philosopher had written. I'd once had this same thought at a grisly crime scene in North Carolina: "Human existence must be a kind of error. It is bad today and every day it will get worse, until the worst of all happens." My own philosophy was a little cheerier than Schopenhauer's, but there were times when he seemed on the mark.

The worst of allhad happened to a twenty-nine-year-old record company executive named Jonathan Mueller, and in the worst possibleway. There were bites on his neck. I didn't see any knife cuts. Mueller had been hung from a lighting fixture in the hotel room. His skin was waxy and translucent, and I didn't think he had been dead very long.

The three of us moved closer to the hanging body. It was swaying slightly and still dripping blood.

"The major bites are all in his neck," I said. "It looks like role-playing vampires again. The hanging has to be their ritual, maybe their signature."