“If I’m dead, I can’t tell you where the girl is,” he said, and looked pleased with himself.

“Then you do know where she is, don’t you?”

He looked scared then, wadding the Kleenex up in his hands until his fingers mottled with the pressure. He had just enough blood in him for the skin to mottle. He’d drunk deep of someone.

The door opened. Barney Wilcox, the vampire, made a small yip of fear. Zerbrowski’s curly salt-and-pepper hair fell around his half-open collar, his tie at half-mast with a spot of something he’d eaten smeared down it. His brown slacks and white shirt looked like he’d slept in them. He might have, but then again, his wife, Katie, could dress him neat as a pin and he still fell apart before he reached the squad room. He pushed his new tortoiseshell glasses more firmly up on his face and held a piece of paper out to me. The paper looked very official. I reached for it, and the vampire yelled, “I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you everything, please, please don’t kill me!”

Zerbrowski drew his hand back. “Is he cooperating, Marshal Blake?” There was the slightest of twinkles in Zerbrowski’s brown eyes. If he grinned at me, I’d kick him in the shins. He stayed serious; there was a missing girl.

I turned back to Barney. “Cooperate, Barney, because once I touch that piece of paper I am out of legal options that don’t include lethal force.”

Barney told us where the secret lair was, and Zerbrowski got up and went for the door. “I’ll start the ball,” he said.

Barney stood up and tried to move toward Zerbrowski, but the leg shackles wouldn’t let him get far. It was standard operating procedure to chain vampires. I’d removed the cuffs to try to gain his trust, and because I didn’t see him as a danger. “Where’s he going?”

“To give the location to the other police, and you better pray that we get there before she’s been turned.”