Out of Time 01 - Out of Time

good to me.”
    “And a paper,” Simon said as he took his seat. “There is a whole city to explore, you know?”
    “Bored with me already?”
    Simon reached across the table and rubbed his thumb across the back of her hand. “Hardly. But as much as I’m loath to admit it, I’m not seventeen anymore.”
    “Could have fooled me,” she said, and took an outrageously large bite from her sandwich.
    He watched her devour her lunch. For such a small thing, she ate like a horse. He carefully unwrapped his sandwich and picked up the newspaper. Studiously ignoring the gory headline emblazoned across the front page, he flipped to the middle section. “I wonder what’s playing at the Roxy.”
    Elizabeth giggled. “You’re certainly getting into the spirit of things.”
    “Just swimming with the tide.”
    Simon skimmed the pages, waiting for something to catch his interest. “There’s a new Marx Brothers movie,” he said and peered around the edge of the paper. Elizabeth’s expression stopped him cold. Her face had gone white. “What’s wrong?”
    Never taking her eyes from the paper, she took it from his hands and laid it down on the table.
    “This...this man,” she stuttered and pointed to the picture below the “Butchered!” headline. In grainy black and white, a man hung upside down in a butcher’s window. Her fingers trembled as she turned the paper around. “I think he was one of them. One of the muggers.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “No. I...It was dark and it happened so fast.” She squinted at the picture. “I can’t tell. Maybe.”
    Elizabeth read the lead of the article. “Drucker’s Butcher Shop had more than its usual fare hanging in the window this morning—side of beef, pig and Dutch O’Banion.”
    She nervously rubbed her forehead just below the small cut at her hairline.
    Simon felt his stomach clench. “Elizabeth?”
    She startled and her eyes darted back and forth. “I think one of them called the one that grabbed me Dutch. I think.”
    “Try to remember.”
    Her eyes flashed to his. “I am,” she sniped.
    Simon took a deep breath and nodded. Of course, she was trying. But if that man was one of those who attacked her, they’d managed to become embroiled in something far greater than a mugging. Unerringly, his hand felt in his pocket for the watch.
    “I don’t know,” she said and looked at the photograph. “God, this is sick. Who would do something like that?”
    Simon moved his chair next to hers. He squeezed her hand and gave her a smile he didn’t feel. “What does the article say?”
    “In what looks to be the third in a trio of gangland slayings, a message has been sent. The bodies of Fish Brody and ‘Mustache’ Pete Arnold were found near the East River earlier in the day. Both had been seen frequenting clubs in the Lower East Side with none other than Dutch O’Banion.”
    She leaned in closer to the paper. “I wish I could see his face more clearly. Or maybe it’s better I can’t.”
    The photograph was blurry, but the gruesome details were clear enough. The gaunt man had been strung upside-down in the window like another side of beef. His mouth hung open, his blank eyes fixed and unseeing. A severed pig’s head rested beside him.
    Simon didn’t know what to say to comfort her. He’d imagined the things he’d do if he ever came across the man who’d attacked Elizabeth, but this, this was inhuman.
    “Father Cavanaugh of St. Patrick’s parish,” Elizabeth read, “found the body after returning from a late night call. O’Banion’s death is eerily reminiscent of the murder of the Weasley twins three months ago. Stabbed twice in the neck, bodies drained of blood...”
    Simon’s hand clenched over hers. “What?”
    Elizabeth kept reading. “A pair of stiletto sharp cuts on the neck and the odd loss of volumes of blood. In each case, the blood at the scene was minimal, leading police to believe the murders occurred elsewhere. The small puddle of blood doesn’t account for the shriveled, desiccated skin of the corpse.”
    “Dear God. The vampire would then suck the blood of the living, so as to make the victim’s body fall away visibly to skin and bones,” Simon recited, feeling the first rush of possibility.
    “A vampire? You don’t really think...”
    Simon took the paper from her and scanned the rest of the article. “I don’t know. The marks on the neck could be stab wounds, and the blood loss could be explained through conventional