John Barringer Driscoll, the third, accountant. The name somehow conjured up a man with a large, proud family in Gillian's mind. Rich people with men that followed in the footsteps of their fathers. The reality differed greatly from the fairy tale.

The only person who had keys to the building was the janitor, and they met him outside. He turned out to be a curt man, sparse with his words and old before his time. His hands were heavily rheumatic and work-worn. His hair was steely gray, and his blue eyes were as faded as his coveralls.

He led them up two flights of stairs because there was no elevator. The building, although neat and well-maintained, was utterly featureless. Functional, boringly similar, drab, uniform, and painted a shade of white not even Gillian could name, but well-built and recently so. No rising damp, neglect, or even one health code violation.

He opened the door, handed them the key, and walked off without a word. They glanced at each other, and the situation would be amusing if not for the circumstances. The place felt like a prison block without wardens.

They hoped to learn more about John but found themselves at a loss. The interior was as drab as the exterior. At some point, a woman tried unsuccessfully to soften the hard, functional decor but failed.

The apartment looked unlived in, and there was none of the clutter of human life visible on any surface. There were no photos or knickknacks, not a thing to say anything about their victim. John was either obsessively neat, or he never moved in.

"A fine lad... decent like—" It certainly explained the janitor's sparse description of their victim.

The kitchen looked unused, and Gillian opened the refrigerator to find it virtually empty, but for one tub of margarine and a half loaf of low GI, whole wheat brown bread.

Colt opened the cabinets, and they were stocked with canned foods—mostly soup, fish, and spaghetti packed in neat rows and sorted to death.

"This looks so... staged," Colt muttered.

The bedroom was the same. Bed, lamp, and a closet filled with gray suits, white shirts, white socks, and white full-briefs. Navy ties, white cotton pajamas, black dress shoes, and black slippers—arranged with OCD precision.

"My closet looks like the clothing hamper expired; some of this stuff's still in their packages," Colt said, walking to the bathroom, and she followed.

The white-tiled bathroom had white towels and white everything. Colt opened the cabinets. "No medication, toothpaste, shaving cream, or even an electric razor."

"I don't get this. Why have an apartment when you don't live in it? Hotel rooms are not as sterile as this. There isn't a single photo, magazine, diary, or paperclip in the whole place, not even change. He doesn't own a TV, radio, laptop, or a CD. I've heard of minimalism, but this is just creepy."

"No one lives like this. Let's go find John's office," Colt sounded pissed as she opened the door for the forensic team and waved them inside.

A smile tugged at Gillian's lips, but she held it in check. Colt said those words as if they hadn't been going to search the office anyway. Sometimes Colt could be just a bit of a bitch, but she liked her new underboss.

The office building didn't look promising, and the inside less so. John had a suite of offices that turned out to be an outer office for his secretary, who quit a month prior and wasn't replaced (according to the receptionist downstairs.) An inner office that looked like his apartment. A white bathroom behind a paneled wall with a big bath and shower cubicle.

"Signs of life," Colt murmured when she spotted a medicine cabinet with the usual array of soaps, little this and that's, aspirin, and razors. They were also sorted to death, but the entire vibe was different. These were actual traces of the man himself.

Gillian turned and found a little draft touching her skin. She studied the panel's details for a moment or two before spotting the button.

It slid open smoothly, and Colt jumped at the sound. Her gun was in her hand in the blink of an eye. Gillian raised a brow, and the Detective just shrugged at her—rather safe than sorry.

Gillian allowed Colt to walk in first and gave her a moment to settle herself. Everything that was missing from the apartment was here. John worked to live and lived at work.

"Call Cassie and Clyde, tell them to pack it up, and come over. They won't find anything at the apartment," Colt ordered, and Gillian obeyed.

It was the small details of people's lives they were trying to piece together to find out where they were in those last few hours of their existence, and from that, they tried to discern what about singled them out in the eyes of a killer that got to Gillian.

It brought it all down to the bare details and reduced their victims to statistics, making them seem less and more real, all at the same time.

John Driscoll lived in this tiny room inside his office. It might have once been a panic room of sorts, but it had become his haven. His laptop stood on his bedside table, and a magazine lay on the bed. Gillian opened the closet, and it looked nothing like the one at his home. One half filled with suits and pants, and the rest looked like it belonged to a teenager. She spotted a Star Wars t-shirt and a pair of leather studded pants.

When Gillian saw their faces on that whiteboard earlier in the evening, she wondered about the average days that started with no warning as to their end. All the little things consuming people's time and effort. What was the purpose of it?

That expensive breakfast you were too busy to really appreciate? That tailored suit or dress you would never get to wear? That new song you would never hear again? That bill you would never get to pay. The face cream you just had to have but never used. That gift you wrapped up so beautifully but never got to fill in the card.

It made their lives feel so futile. Wasted. Unfinished. Like a beautiful painting only half done.

The potential of it and the wonder ended with a single act of cruelty by one fatal stroke, like cutting a puppet's string in mid-dance.

"Don't." The word startled Gillian.

She was so wrapped up in her own thoughts she lost track of the people around her and didn't hear Colt's approach.

"Don't get entangled in the details of what they would never get to do. Their lives were stolen from them, yes. Lilly would never see her children grow up, go to their graduation, attend their weddings, or hold her grandchildren, but Lilly Sims has a legacy. Her children adored her, and we owe them closure." Their eyes met.

"We must find this guy so no other child would have to mourn their mother or mother mourn their child. We fight, so no woman loses the chance to tell her man that she loves him. We owe them the devotion of our time and effort to stop this killer and not fail." She believed her words and lived by them—it was her code of honor.

"We can't do that if we can't shut away our pity and pain or our feelings of loss and futility. We can stare at that board and with our secret heart see the people, while with our mind, we need to see the details that connect the dots." So much unspoken pain and emotion lay beneath the words, enough to tell a rookie that the lesson had been a dear one.

"The only place these people's lives ever crossed was on the tollgate at the I90..." Gillian joked, her mind retracing their steps, and both of them froze.

"A manned tollgate that takes pictures of every number plate. He had their plates, and finding their details would be easy enough. He could have followed and watched them, and no one would ever know, guess or suspect." Colt looked stunned.

"So all they ever did wrong was use the wrong tollgate, but how do we know which one? Except that maybe he would have worked there since his teens. If we're fortunate, his name might crosscheck with our recent search for inmate releases," Gillian mused, and it sounded like such a long shot that it might actually be right.

"We might make a detective out of you yet," Colt teased, and Gillian allowed herself a small smile.

She liked that Colt accepted her so readily. Actually, the whole team did. What would they do if they ever found out the truth? Apart from never surviving their discovery.

Gillian wasn't who she pretended to be and could never be herself in this world, and it bothered her during the day when she tried to sleep. Then again, they never allowed her to be herself in her other world, either. So what was really the difference? Except this was her choice—the lesser of two evils.

"We'll run it and see if anything pops up," Colt finished as she scraped her belongings together.

It was time to go home, except Gillian didn't feel like going home—she was still too amped. She had to keep up appearances at least, so she left the station and caught a cab.

"Where to?" The driver asked with a voice that told her the night was getting long for him with first light crowning the ether, but she wasn't focused on him.

"Is there a gym or something near here?" She asked, and he nodded.

"Yeah, just two blocks over. They've got a great wall climb, pool, and everything. I have a regular that goes there. A bit on the expensive side, though," the cabby warned, and Gillian's eyes focused on him for the first time, tuning the rest of the world out.

He was of indeterminable background. Dark hair, heavyset, ordinary face, tired eyes, but just the tiniest spark of interest remained in them. All the things he must have seen in his life, she marveled and yet pitied him.

"That would be okay," she acknowledged. He nodded and drove on just as the sun crested the buildings with glorious brilliance, and Gillian reached for her shades.

Today, she was just too vampire to find the sun comfortable. They were sensitive to light, some more than others.

She always found the myths hilarious as a child. She read all things vampire as voraciously as any other young adult—the human versions, anyway. Her kind has spent millennia making humans believe that sunlight killed a vampire, they couldn't eat human foods, and had to sleep in coffins, but the darker myths came from humanity. Anything different had to be wicked, and evil things would die when holy water touched their skin, or you showed such a creature a cross. She smirked.

No one knows when their kind first evolved into being, how, or why. They were not the only errant branches on the human tree, far from it, but they are one of the species that survived better. Perhaps because they look and act so much like humans. Like all the other "freaks," they found it better to hide themselves until humanity forgot about them, and somehow, the legends and stories became something unexpected.

Despite the romantic view humans seemed to have cultivated around stories like Dracula and Twilight, supernaturals had not forgotten eons of being hunted, hated, and pursued. They remembered the depth of darkness hiding in the human heart and how far these creatures would go to protect themselves.

The real vampire history was just as fraught with exaggerations and absolute lies as the human world, except the consequences of their lies were not amusing.