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Standing at the grave side of his son, Nosson Sh'muel ben Reb Pinchas Chayim wasn't quite sure what he should be feeling. Grief, obviously. His eldest son was dead at 24. Yet there was tradition to consider, and tradition said that he shouldn't mourn Itzak's death.

Even under more normal circumstances, he would not have begun formal mourning for several more days, for this was the second day of Chol Ha'Moed Pesach. Burials were permitted on the intermediate days of festivals, but one did not begin to formally mourn the deceased until the festival was over.

But in this case, there would never be any mourning. For Itzak ben Reb Nosson Sh'muel had killed himself that morning by jumping from the roof of the synagogue into the street. A suicide. And the law was that there should be no mourning for a suicide. You simply buried him and went on as if nothing had happened.

Of course, it was never quite as simple as that. How could you not mourn a dead child? The law said that he could not observe the normal mourning practices. But the law could not compel a parent to simply forget that his child had ever existed. It could not prevent him from missing him.

There was no real precedent to follow in such a case. The markers on the other two graves in this tiny section of the cemetery dated to the previous century. If those two had left parents—or even children—they would be long dead by now. So who could you talk to for guidance in such a case. The Rabbi?

The Rabbi had ruled that it was a suicide, which was actually very unusual. Jewish Law was quite specific about what was suicide, and what was merely an unfortunate death. If someone couldn't control his own actions, if he couldn't recognize that what he was doing was going to kill him, that it was wrong, then it was obvious that he wasn't responsible for the result. A person had to know that what he was doing was wrong in order for it to be considered a sin. In order for it to be called suicide.

So an insane person couldn't commit an act that would be considered suicide under Jewish law. And, in a lovely piece of circular logic set down by the Sages many centuries earlier, because suicide was an inherently irrational act, someone who committed suicide was obviously insane.

This left a very large loophole in the law, and the rabbis usually tried to take advantage of it. Self-destruction normally carried a terrible stigma, for willful suicide implied a defiance of God, who had given each person his life, and who, alone, could decide when that life was to be taken away. In general, suicide was considered permissible only when the alternative was to accept baptism, and so be forced into an act that, while perfectly proper for a gentile, constituted idol worship for a Jew.

The Talmud defined a suicide as one who declared, in front of witnesses, that he was going to kill himself in defiance of God's law, and then proceeded to do exactly that. And Itzak had stormed into the Shul during morning prayers, cursing God, and invoking the Divine Name, and loudly declaring that he was going to kill himself.

Then, before anyone had sufficiently recovered from the shock of his blasphemy to do anything about it, Itzak had climbed to the roof of the synagogue and dived off, plummeting headfirst the 50 feet to the pavement.

So now they were standing here, beside a hastily-dug grave in the back corner of the cemetery, where despite the usual congestion that came from having to crowd a thousand years of burials into a half-acre plot, there were only two other graves in the tiny section, carefully set apart behind a low stone wall.

In the rest of the cemetery, the markers were thickly packed together. Knowing that the gentile rulers of the city would never permit the Jewish cemetery to be expanded—just as they would never allow the ghetto itself to expand beyond its walls—the earliest residents of the Kapelskof ghetto had dug the first graves as deep as possible. Most now contained at least four bodies, buried one atop the other. With care, and by assuring that each individual burial was separated from the one beneath it by a minimum of three tefachim of earth, this was permitted if there was no alternative.

As required by Jewish law, the section where the suicides were buried was set apart from the regular graves. True suicides had publicly defied God, and the law emphasized their outcast status by refusing them burial amongst decent men and women. By now the suicide section was actually sunken behind its wall, for the main part of the cemetery had been built up with earth to allow another layer of burials.

In a curious irony, only the true outcasts of the community were afforded the dignity of a private grave.

There was no ceremony. The normal practice was to first wash the body, as part of an ancient purification ritual, then to dress the deceased in white linen shrouds. But Itzak had, quite naturally, bled when he hit the pavement, and the blood had soaked into his clothing. In such cases there was no washing, and shrouds were not used. Instead, his fully-clothed body was wrapped in a sheet, placed into its coffin—which, like all Jewish coffins, was made of plain, flat boards held together with wooden pegs—and simply buried.

Reb Nosson Sh'muel put a shovelful of dirt into the grave, using the back of the shovel, as tradition decreed, then stood back while the grave diggers completed filling it in. At this point, had this had been a normal burial, the Rabbi would have read the traditional passages over the grave. Were it not the middle of a festival, the Cantor would also have participated by chanting the El Moleh Rachamim prayer, which asked God to take the soul of the departed under the wings of His presence. And someone might have said a few words about the deceased. (Eulogies are not delivered, nor is the El Moleh said, on festivals, so this ritual would have been lacking in any case.) Then Reb Nosson, as the father of the deceased, along with all of his immediate relatives, would have gone back to his home and remained there, in formal mourning, for the next seven days, emerging only on the Sabbath to attend services in the synagogue. On the other days, enough men would come to the mourners' house to allow services to be conducted there.

But, because Itzak had killed himself, as soon as they were finished, Reb Nosson would return to his normal life, opening his little tailor shop as if nothing had happened. It would be difficult, but this was what his faith dictated, and he would not defy God, as his son had been willing to do.

How could he have done it? Reb Nosson wondered. To throw away his life, and to curse God at the same time! Granted, life in the Kapelskof ghetto was difficult, but the holy Torah taught that the Jewish exile amidst the goyim—the gentiles—was a punishment for Israel's lack of faith. For his people's tendency to wander off after strange gods.

But Reb Nosson also recognized that any exile must eventually end. Hadn't the Prophets promised that God, at the appropriate time, would send His Messiah to redeem His people, restore the dead to life, and lead them back to the land of Israel?

"It's a pity, Reb Nosson," said Reb Mendel, the head gravedigger, as they walked away through the cemetery. Like Reb Nosson, who was his friend, Reb Mendel couldn't understand why anyone would kill himself in such a blasphemous manner. True, Itzak had been acting crazy over that girl. But surely that wasn't enough to cause him to kill himself? He was young, and would have got over her and found another girl—a more appropriate girl—before long.

"The Rabbi made his ruling," Reb Nosson said. "That's why he's the Rabbi, because he knows about these things."

"True enough."

"So, I will accept his ruling, and I will go on with my life, right?"

"What else can you do?"

"What else, indeed?"

Rabbi Shimon ben Rabbi Velvel was concerned. Had he made the right decision when he declared young Itzak a suicide? True, he had absolutely and completely fit the legal description of such a death. But there had been his strange obsession with that shiksa, which had prompted his blasphemy, and no doubt kindled the fury that had made him curse God and kill himself. If he hadn't so precisely fit the Talmudic definition of a suicide, the rabbi could have simply declared Itzak insane, which would have permitted a normal burial.

And there was also the matter of his red hair. There were stories about such people.

He decided that he would have to look into it more closely. If he thought there was any danger, then he would go quietly to the cemetery and say the proper prayers himself. Just as a precaution.

There would be nothing on this matter in the thick volumes of the Talmud. Nor would the Codes address it, for it was beyond the ken of normal life and death. The Talmud and Codes addressed the question of how to conduct a funeral, how to wash a body, and even when a death was truly a suicide, or when it was merely an insane act committed by an irrational person.

But they did not touch on the significance of the color of a man's hair, nor on the things he had said before he killed himself. He vaguely remembered a reference to such a situation in one of the books of the Kabala. Just a passing mention, in a rare and obscure text. With a sigh, he took down a large manuscript volume and began reading.

Prince Yusef Kapelski watched them from the tower of his palace. You could see over the ghetto wall from there, and it was a good place to watch. It was all Father Istvan's fault, of course. Every Easter it was the same damned thing. The peasants would troop into the church, as they did every other Sunday, to worship in the manner of their ancestors, as they had done through all the centuries of Roman Catholic Poland.

And while they were there they would hear the wonderful story of the Risen Son of God, and of the miraculous thing he had done by taking the sins of the whole world onto his shoulders. But the damned priest always insisted on not only repeating the Passion story, as the Church demanded on this day, but on adding his own lurid embellishments, and always putting his strongest emphasis on the passages which condemned the Jews for deicide.

Kapelski considered himself an enlightened ruler. As such, he suspected that it was probably wrong to kill people today for the crimes of their distant ancestors. The prince didn't particularly like Jews—he was a typical Pole in that respect—but he also didn't like the idea of killing people who were useful to his city, and these damned Easter riots always seemed to kill a few of the useful ones.

It wouldn't be so bad, he thought, if they just killed the old people. They were of no real value to him, since they produced nothing and consumed as much food as the younger, more valuable, ghetto residents. But the old people were usually in their houses, and his peasants seemed to lack the ambition to break down the doors and drag them out. Instead, they went after the shopkeepers. They were easier to get to, for the very fact that they were in business meant that their doors were generally open. The most useful Jews in the entire ghetto, Kapelski thought.

Last year they'd killed the only man in Kapelskof, Jew or Christian, who could make a comfortable pair of boots!

Rabbi Shimon finally located the passage he'd been searching for. The text was an obscure one, rarely encountered by even the most ardent student of Kabala. And the passage was actually in a commentary on that text, written in miniscule on the right-hand margin of the page. A manuscript text at that, of which fewer than a hundred copies had ever existed.

It had confirmed his fears. There was a terrible danger when any man killed himself under these particular circumstances. And the danger was magnified if he also had red hair. This danger could only be averted if special prayers were read over his grave. Not the usual burial prayers, but special kabalistic formulae, which were to be found in yet another obscure text. The Rabbi wasn't even sure that he owned a copy. He might have to write to a colleague in Krakow, and hope that the reply came in time.

Still, at least he knew that he could do something. And there was a special amulet that would provide protection in the interim, until the danger could be permanently averted. He could write it out in only a few minutes, seal it in a tube, and place it in the freshly-turned earth of the grave.

The Rabbi looked up from his studies at the sudden noise in the street, realizing with horror that in the excitement ensuing from Itzak's spectacular death everyone had completely forgot what day this was on the goyishe calendar.

It was their Easter holy day—the day when the goyim preached love for their neighbors, and then expressed that love by killing Jews. It was a day when every sensible Jew should be carefully bolted behind as many doors as possible.

In some cities even thick doors and stout bolts hadn't helped. There, the 'pious' rioters had simply burned down the houses with their owners trapped inside. In Kapelskof there was little danger of that happening. The gentiles' homes were pressed up tight against the ghetto wall, so to burn the ghetto would almost certainly result in burning the rest of the town as well.

And, perhaps more to the point, the Prince's palace also shared a wall with the ghetto. Their 'benevolent' ruler might tolerate a few dead Jews each year, but he wasn't likely to put up with his subjects burning down his own home in the process.

So the rioters always settled for grabbing anyone who was foolish enough to let himself be seen. Or rushed into open shops, before the owners could realize what was happening and lock their doors.

But he had forgotten. Itzak's suicide had shocked him so completely that everything else had slipped his mind.

The suicide, and Itzak's red hair. There was a horrible danger to the community. Worse, even, than the goyim who were now pouring through the streets of the ghetto.

But Rabbi Shimon had no time left to concern himself with the dead man's hair, or with writing to his friend for the special prayers, or even with writing out the amulet that would give interim protection, for at that moment five men burst into the room and began to beat him with heavy clubs.

Reb Mendel, the gravedigger, was exhausted. In the aftermath of the riot, eight people had been left dead, and all of them required burial as quickly as possible.

Worse, one of them had been their beloved Rabbi, who had been clubbed to death in his own study hall. Reb Nosson, the tailor, had already written to a cousin in Warsaw, where there were many rabbis. But it would require time, and probably a certain amount of pleading, to entice another to fill the post of a murdered man, so for now the community was without a leader.

It would also require obtaining special permission from the prince, who had the final say on the settlement of any outsider in their ghetto. Special permission that would probably involve a heavy payment for the prince's assent.

Two weeks after the Easter riot, the strange deaths began. The first was a pig butcher, found hanging from a meat hook in the back of his own shop. His throat had been cut, but there was no blood on the floor beneath him, nor anywhere in his shop.

Detective Sergeant David Schneider sat quietly in the tiled corridor outside the autopsy room. There were windows in the doors, and he could have watched what was happening. Many detectives would. But he had never cared to observe that particular procedure. Heredity and upbringing, he thought. Schneider was an Orthodox Jew, and Jewish law actually prohibited autopsies, unless performing one might help save the life of someone who was dying of the same thing. Something, he knew perfectly well, that was not the case here.

But Schneider was also a police officer, and he had to balance the strictures of his faith with the requirements of Florida law. That law mandated an autopsy in all cases when the deceased had not been under a physician's care, or when there were suspicious circumstances surrounding the death. The State had a vested interest in preventing murder when it could, and punishing it when it couldn't.

Schneider was also curious about this particular case, which was why he was waiting in a hallway in the Medical Examiner's Office, and not at home in bed, at 2:00 o'clock on a Thursday morning.

The girl on the table had been found on the beach just before nightfall. That particular section of beach wasn't normally very crowded, and no one who had been there remembered seeing her alive. No one, at least, that they’d been able to find up to this point.

On the other hand, no one really remembered seeing her dead, either. One of the realities of life in Florida was that most people who saw a young woman stretched out on a towel on the beach would simply presume that she was asleep, or sunbathing. There'd been nothing about her appearance to suggest otherwise. The only reason she'd even been noticed was that a ten-year-old kid playing Frisbee had thought it odd that she didn't wake up and start yelling at him when he tripped over her in making a catch.

The boy's father had then approached her and realized that she was dead. He had stayed, sending the boy back to their hotel to call the Sheriff's Department. (Port Morrow Beach was an unincorporated section of Benjamin County; only incorporated towns and cities had police departments. The sheriff provided all law enforcement services for the rest of the county, in addition to running the County Jail.)

The girl had been dressed in a tiny, black bikini, and even in death there was a rather stark aura of extreme physical fitness about her. She looked like someone who worked out every day. An absolutely gorgeous brunette, with a good tan, though now much paler in death.

And that was what had been so odd. Though many people—particularly murderers—were unaware of the fact, it was almost always possible to tell if a body had been moved after death. When the body was naked, or, as in this case, very nearly so, the indications were even more obvious. These indications developed from entirely normal physical processes.

As long as a person remained alive, and their heart continued to beat, no matter how feebly, blood circulated through the body. That was why Caucasians tended to look slightly pinkish, their sparsely-pigmented skin taking on some of the color of the blood circulating beneath it. That was also why embalming fluid was a bright pink color.

But at the moment of death, the heart stopped and a different set of natural forces took over. Gravity quickly exerted its influence, and the still-liquid blood, no longer being forcibly moved around the body, acted like any other liquid and began to collect in the lowest parts of the body. The technical term is post mortem lividity. The parts of the body where the blood collected turned a reddish-purple color from their overload of blood. After a relatively short time, the collected blood leaked from the capillaries and permeated the flesh, and after a few hours the discoloration became permanent.

When she was discovered, the girl's body, which had been shaded by a huge live oak tree, was cool. The Deputy Medical Examiner who did the initial examination at the site had pulled aside the scrap of cloth that made up her bikini bottom and dispassionately shoved a thermometer up her rear.

Schneider's faith taught that the dead were always to be treated with the utmost respect, and the doctor's action had struck him as particularly undignified. But he also knew there was a good reason for it. Dead bodies cooled at a fairly regular rate, and temperature was used to estimate the time of death.

The doctor had removed the thermometer after a couple of minutes and compared the reading with a chart in his notebook. "She's been dead about five hours," he had announced. "Might be longer, though—this spot was in the sun for a lot of that time and that could have slowed the cooling process." It was an obvious problem, for the added factor of solar heating could have thrown off the dead girl's internal temperature reading by several degrees, which would in turn throw off his calculation of the time of death.

Any time someone has been dead for five or more hours, lividity is generally starting to become obvious. Except that, in this case, there seemed to be none at all. They had turned her over in the process of examining the scene, and had been unable to find any marks on her body.

Dr. Robert Edgars, the Chief Medical Examiner for Benjamin County, came out of the autopsy room. "Weird case," he said.

"How do you explain the lack of lividity?" Schneider asked.

"No blood, Dave. We found maybe 100 milliliters in her body. And that was in the heart. That's all. I can't really explain it yet, but I'm damned sure going to try to figure it out."

The detective shook his head. "I can understand how someone without any blood in them would be dead," he said. "But how did anyone get the blood out of her?"

"If I believed in such things, I'd guess a vampire," the doctor laughed. "But I'm a scientist, so I tend not to believe." He smiled. "On the other hand, I get the feeling that someone wants us to think we're dealing with a vampire."

"How so?"

"There are two marks directly over the external carotid artery on the left side of the neck, with penetration into the artery. There even seems to be a hint of what look like tooth marks at the site, as if someone had bitten into her neck with a set of fangs and then sucked the blood out orally. Not possible, though. To extract that much blood you'd need a machine of some sort."

Schneider nodded. "So what are we looking for?"

"Damned if I know. Maybe a crazy undertaker—I think you might be able to do the blood extraction with an embalming machine." He shook his head. "But, then again, probably not."

"Anything you know for sure?"

"She was moved after she was dead."

"You're sure?"

"Even without the usual post mortem lividity, there are other indications. She was found on her back, but there are tissue indications that she was on her side for some time after she died. And the time of death was probably in the early afternoon. Stomach contents are indicative of someone who had just eaten lunch. Specifically, a couple of hot dogs, with the digestion process barely started."

"Official cause of death?"

"Pending some lab results, exsanguination through unknown means. And no matter how much someone would like us to think we're dealing with some sort of supernatural creature, the time of death rules out any possibility of a vampire. She was definitely killed during daylight hours."

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