Characters in The Night Flier

The airport sat on the outskirts of the much plusher town of Falmouth, existing mostly on landing fees paid by rich summer residents. Claire Bowie, the Night Flier’s first victim, had been CCA’s night traffic controller and owned a quarter interest in the airfield.

Like Dottie Walsh, who had gone home one night and taken a bath with a dry-cleaning bag wrapped around her head. Don’t be a fool, he told himself, but he was uneasy just the same. The story was sitting there, right there, big as life and twice as ugly.

The Beech 18 hit it, water-looped, and exploded. Doug Sarch had been thrown clear, his body smoking and singed but probably still alive, as little as his grieving parents would want to believe such a thing.

The time of landing he noted as 4:49 A.M.; he recorded the pilot’s name as Dwight Renfield, and the point of N101BL’s origination as Bangor, Maine. The times were undoubtedly correct.

It was the blood his loyal Inside View readers would care about, of course, and that was just as it should be, world without end, amen, amen, but Dees was increasingly aware that blood (or, in the case of good old Ray and Ellen Sarch, the lack of blood) was …

4 I want to run this guy’s backtrail, he had told Merton Morrison, starting with the first one we know about, up in Maine. Less than four hours later he had been at Cumberland County Airport, talking to a mechanic named Ezra Hannon.

“Heading 160. Leaving 6 for 3,000, roger.” “And be aware we still got some nasty weather down here.” “Roger,” Dees said, thinking that ole Farmer John, down there in whatever beer-barrel passed for Air Traffic Control in Wilmington, was sure one hell of a sport to tell him that.

That’s the only way I can figger it.” Dees didn’t know from which direction Gerard “Buck” Kendall had been gotten, but he knew that this time the victim’s throat had not been ripped out. This time there were holes, holes from which “Dwight Renfield” had presumably sucked his victim’s blood.

The Night Flier had flown into Alderton’s Lakeview Airport shortly after ten-thirty, killed that strapping fellow Buck Kendall, drunk his blood, and flown out again in his Cessna sometime before Jenna Kendall came by at five o’clock on the morning of the twenty-fourth to give her husband a fresh-made waffle …

Libby Grannit in Comp would come up with a punchier, more colorful one, of course—that was, after all, her job—but Dees’s instincts were good all the way up to headlines, and he usually found the right street, if not often the actual address and apartment number.

There was something undeniably creepy about them—to Merton Morrison they looked like George Romero zombies in tuxedos. He nodded and slipped them back into the envelope. Dees disliked all editors on principle, but he had to admit that this one at least gave credit where credit was due.

On his way home, he’d stopped for gas at the Duffrey Texaco and told Norm Wilson, the proprietor, that he thought he was coming down with the flu. Norm told Dees that he thought Ray was probably right about that—he’d looked pale and wan, suddenly even older than his years.

The Sarches had said nothing; the Sarches had done nothing. Except that latter wasn’t quite right, Dees had discovered. Ray Sarch had certainly done something; he had invited the Night Flier in to watch an old Gunsmoke episode and drink a beer with his wife.

Aside from Ellen’s sister, Raylene, who was a pretty fair Socket Wrench Susie, the two of them had been the whole shebang.

This woman, Selida McCammon, had identified herself to Dees as one of the late Ellen Sarch’s closest friends. When Dees asked how Ellen had seemed, Selida had paused and then said, “Dreamy, somehow. Like a high-school girl with a crush, almost seventy years old or not.