The next day, Ben and Susan visit Matt in his hospital room. Matt is better but still weak. Since Mike is unable to leave the hospital, he will handle vampire research. The next step is for Susan and Ben to talk to Doctor Jimmy Cody, who examined both Mike Ryerson and Floyd Tibbits, so he may be poised to believe. They need to recruit Father Callahan as well. Susan asks why they do not go to the Marsten House as they had planned to do in the first place, but the situation has changed with Matt’s heart attack. Ben and Matt have decided to proceed on the assumption that vampires are real. The last thing they want to do is alert Barlow and Straker that someone is onto them.

When Ben and Susan go to speak with Doctor Cody, Cody tells them someone snatched all the bodies from the county morgue in Portland. Ben and Susan tell him their story, and Cody thinks it over. Finally, he tells them there are so many things still unknown that medical science is hardly more than white magic.

Cody lays out a plan to examine the bodies of the suspected vampire victims.