30 Days of Night: Light of Day by Jeff Mariotte

Larissa Dixson got to the small apartment complex, the sun was shining and a warm breeze blew in off the lake, bringing with it a faintly briny scent and the squawking cries of gulls.
    Patrol officers had taped off the parking lot and denied access to the building to anyone except residents. News crews and reporters worked the perimeter, vans with satellite uplinks jammed the block. One of the uniformed cops met Alex and Larissa at the yellow tape barrier. “Glad you’re here,” he said. “This is turning into a circus.”
    “Is there any reason to think the parking lot is part of the crime scene?” Larissa asked him.
    “No, but blocking it off was the only way to keep the press out of the building. They’re like sharks.”
    “It’s that whole stupid vampire angle,” Alex said.
    Larissa shot him in the ribs with her elbow. “Don’t say that word out loud.”
    “Yeah, I know, I’m sorry. It just has everybody so worked up.”
    Not only was the mass media obsessed with vampires these days, but when the first corpse had shown up, everybody in the squad room had started calling it the “vampire” case. Alex didn’t believe in vampires or anything else that fell into the general category of the supernatural, hadn’t since his seventh Christmas when he had found an Atari console in his parents’ closet that had shown up beside the tree on the big morning unwrapped, a gift from “Santa.” He was quickly finding that not everybody felt the same way he did. He had heard so-called experts on television talk shows discussing vampires with as much apparent certitude as if they had been talking about the latest economic issue or political maneuver. He glanced around, hoping no one from the press had heard his comment.
    “Let’s just get inside,” Larissa said. She and Alex signed their names on the uniformed officer’s scene log and ducked under the tape.
    The building was a modern monstrosity of poured concrete, steel, and glass, constructed of interlocking rectangles that gave each two-story unit a sense of privacy. Doorways were staggered in different walls so they didn’t face each other.
    “How many units?” Larissa asked the cop.
    “Eight.”
    “On-site manager?”
    “No.” The cop inclined his head toward a portly manwith a graying goatee, wearing a white shirt with sweat-ringed armpits and a cheap striped tie. He stood off to one side, mopping his face with a handkerchief. “That’s the owner. He’s thrown up three times already.”
    “He go inside?”
    “No, he hasn’t seen the DB. He’s just a nervous type, I guess.”
    Alex let Larissa question the cop. She had a forthright style of speaking, without a lot of the wasted words that were often typical of cop talk. Alex supposed it came from a desire to be thoroughly understood, especially when writing reports or testifying in court, that led to the use of such redundant phrases as “subject was traveling in a westbound direction at a high rate of speed.” Alex was more of a thinker than a talker, or he liked to fancy himself that way, at any rate. When he did speak it was judiciously, weighing his words, picking his phrases. If he let the moment carry him, it was too easy to make mistakes, as he had with the vampire comment.
    “Don’t let him leave, okay?” he told the cop. “We’ll need to talk to him after we look around.”
    “Got it.”
    The cop led them around to the building’s east side and pointed out an open doorway. The number 6 was tacked on the wall beside the door. “That’s the one. She’s inside.”
    “Thanks,” Larissa said. The cop left them and disappeared around the corner. Larissa started for the doorbut Alex waited, turning in a slow circle, taking a look at what the apartment’s resident would have seen outside her door. And who might have been looking back.
    As he looked, he smeared Vicks VapoRub on his upper lip, to block the smells he would encounter inside. Larissa wouldn’t use it, saying she wanted