Darkfall

Something about their sharp faces and squinted eyes made them seem like a trio of stilt-legged birds eagerly rushing toward a new piece of carrion.
    Jack Dawson shivered.
    The wind shook the day again. Along the street, the stark branches of the leafless trees rattled against one another. That sound brought to mind a Halloween-like image of animated skeletons engaged in a macabre dance.
    III
    The assistant medical examiner and two other men from the pathology lab were in the kitchen, where Ross Morrant, the bodyguard, was sprawled in a mess of blood, mayonnaise, mustard, and salami. He had been attacked and killed while preparing a midnight snack.
    On the second floor of the townhouse, in the master bathroom, blood patterned every surface, decorated every corner: sprays of blood, streaks of it, smears and drops; bloody handprints on the walls and on the edge of the tub.
    Jack and Rebecca stood at the doorway, peering in, touching nothing. Everything had to remain undisturbed until the lab men were finished.
    Vincent Vastagliano, fully clothed, lay jammed between the tub and sink, his head resting against the base of the toilet. He had been a big man, somewhat flabby, with dark hair and bushy eyebrows. His slacks and shirt were blood soaked. One eye had been torn from its socket. The other was open wide, staring sightlessly. One hand was clenched; the other was open, relaxed. His face, neck, and hands were marked by dozens of small wounds. His clothes had been ripped in at least fifty or sixty places, and through those narrow rents in the fabric, other dark and bloody injuries could be seen.
    “Worse than the other three,” Rebecca said.
    “Much.”
    This was the fourth hideously disfigured corpse they’d seen in the past four days. Rebecca was probably right: There was a psychopath on the loose.
    But this wasn’t merely a crazed killer who slaughtered while in the grip of a psychotic rage or fugue. This lunatic was more formidable than that, for he seemed to be a psychopath with a purpose, perhaps even a holy crusade: All four of his victims had been in one way or another involved in the illegal drug trade.
    Rumors were circulating to the effect that a gang war was getting underway, a dispute over territories, but Jack didn’t put much faith in that explanation. For one thing, the rumors were… strange. Besides, these didn’t look like gangland killings. They certainly weren’t the work of a professional assassin; there was nothing clean, efficient, or professional about them. They were savage killings, the product of a badly, darkly twisted personality.
    Actually, Jack would have preferred tracking down an ordinary hit man. This was going to be tougher. Few criminals were as cunning, clever, bold, or difficult to catch as a maniac with a mission.
    “The number of wounds fits the pattern,” Jack said.
    “But they’re not the same kind of wounds we’ve seen before. Those were stabbings. These definitely aren’t punctures. They’re too ragged for that. So maybe this one isn’t by the same hand.”
    “It is,” he said.
    “Too soon to say.”
    “It’s the same case,” he insisted.
    “You sound so certain.”
    “I feel it.”
    “Don’t get mystical on me like you did yesterday.”
    “I never.”
    “Oh, yes, you did.”
    “We were only following up viable leads yesterday.”
    “In a voodoo shop that sells goat’s blood and magic amulets.”
    “So? It was still a viable lead,” he said.
    They studied the corpse in silence.
    Then Rebecca said, “It almost looks as if something bit him about a hundred times. He looks… chewed .”
    “Yeah. Something small,” he said.
    “Rats?”
    “This is really a nice neighborhood.”
    “Yeah, sure, but it’s also just one big happy city, Jack. The good and the bad neighborhoods share the same streets, the same sewers, the same rats. It’s democracy in action.”
    “If those’re rat bites, then the damned things came along and nibbled at him after he was already dead; they must’ve been drawn by the scent of blood. Rats are basically scavengers. They aren’t bold. They aren’t aggressive. People don’t get attacked by packs of rats in their own homes. You ever heard of such a thing?”
    “No,” she admitted. “So the rats came along after he was dead, and they gnawed on him. But it was only rats. Don’t try to make it anything mystical.”
    “Did I say anything?”
    “You really bothered me yesterday.”
    “We were only following viable