
BLOOD HUNT
Cover art by Michelle Lee 2011
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
1
1
The Body in the Bay
Where do they begin, the roads that lead a man to hell?
...With a ritual...
Lien Takananda sat at the kitchen table wearing her bathrobe, her short helmet of black hair still rumpled from sleep. She held three Chinese coins, concentrating, though aware of her husband Harry upstairs in the bathroom, singing a lascivious parody of a saccharine popular song as he shaved. Almond eyes on the copy of I Ching before her, she asked the same question she had every morning for over fifteen years, since Harry joined the San Francisco police: "Will my husband be safe today?" Then she threw the coins.
The six throws produced hexagram number ten, Treading. Treading upon the tail of the tiger, the text read. It does not bite the man. Success.
She sighed in relief, then smiled, listening to Harry sing. After a minute, she gathered the coins again, and as she had done for most of the past year, asked on behalf of Harry's partner, "Will Garreth Mikaelian be safe today?"
This time the coins produced hexagram number thirty-six, Darkening of the Light, with two moving lines. She bit her lip. The text of both the hexagram and the individual lines was cautionary. However, the moving lines produced a second hexagram, forty-six, Pushing Upward, which read: Pushing upward has supreme success. One must see the great man. Fear not.
She read the interpretation of the text just to be certain of its meaning. Reassured, Lien wrapped the coins and book in black silk and returned them to their shelf, then began preparing Harry's breakfast.
...with nagging grief...
Garreth Mikaelian still felt the void in his life and in the apartment around him. Through the open bathroom door he saw the most visible evidence: the bed, empty, slightly depressed on one side but otherwise neat. Marti's sprawling, twisting sleep used to turn their nights into a wrestle for blankets that left them in a tangled knot every morning.
He looked away quickly and concentrated on his reflection in the mirror. A square face with sandy hair and smoky gray eyes looked back at him, filling the mirror. Filling it a bit more than he liked, admittedly, but the width gave the illusion of a big man, larger than his actual five foot eight.
And makes you look like a cop even stark naked, my man, he silently told the reflection.
He leaned closer to the mirror, frowning as he worked the humming razor across his upper lip. He looked older than he would like, too. Barely twenty-eight and lines already etched down his forehead between his eyes and around the corners of his mouth...lines not there a year ago.
Don't I ever stop missing her?
When Judith walked out he felt more relief than anything, though he missed his son. But Marti was different from Judith. He could talk to her. After what she saw as a nurse in the ER at San Francisco General every day, he had not been afraid of shocking or frightening her by talking about what happened to him at work, or of the examples he witnessed of man's unrelenting and fiendishly imaginative inhumanity to man. He could even cry in front of her and still feel like a man. They were two halves of the same soul.
His fingers tightened around the razor, dragging it under his chin. His vision blurred. Fate was a bitch! Why else give him such a woman and then put her and their unborn child in an intersection with an impatient driver trying to beat the light.
When does the pain stop? When does the emptiness fill?
At least he had the department. He could fill the void with work.
...with a corpse...
The body floated face down in the bay, held on the surface by air trapped under its shirt and red suit coat. Carried on the tide, supported by its chance water wings, it drifted into the watery span between Fisherman's Wharf and the forbidding silhouette of Alcatraz Island. Bobbing, it awaited discovery.
2
"I Ching says you need to be careful today, Mik-san." From where he stood pouring himself a cup of coffee, Harry Takananda's voice carried to Garreth above Homicide's background noise of murmuring voices, ringing telephones, and tapping typewriters.
Squatted on his heels pawing through the bottom drawer of a file cabinet, Garreth nodded. "Right," he said around the pencil in his mouth.
Harry added two lumps of sugar to the coffee. "But Lien says there is good fortune in acting according to duty."
"Devoted to duty, that's me, Harry-san." Now, where the hell was that damned file?
Harry stared into the coffee, then added two more lumps of sugar before carrying the cup back to his desk. He sat down at the typewriter. The chair grunted in protest, bearing witness to how many times Harry had added those extra lumps over the years.
Rob Cohen, whose desk sat on the other side of a pillar from Harry's, asked, "Do you really believe in that stuff?"
"My wife does." Harry sipped his coffee, then hunched over the typewriter. "I went through the book once and found that of the sixty-four hexagrams, only half a dozen are outright downers. The odds are she'll throw a positive hexagram most mornings, so, Inspector-san..." He steepled his fingers and bowed toward Cohen, voice rising into a singsong. "...if it give honorable wife peace of mind, this superior man should not object, you aglee?"
Cohen pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Maybe I should introduce my wife to I Ching, too."
At the file cabinet, Garreth grinned.
The door of the lieutenant's office opened. Lucas Serruto stepped out waving a memo sheet. His dark, dapper good looks always made Garreth think of an actor cast to play a detective in a movie where the cop was the hero. Garreth envied the way Serruto made anything he wore appear expensive and custom-tailored. "Any volunteers to go look at a floater?"
Around the office, heads bent industriously over reports and typewriters.
Serruto surveyed the room for a minute, then shrugged. "Eenie, meenie, minie --- Takananda, the Cicione killing is in the hands of the DA, isn't it? That leaves you with just the bodega shooting."
Harry looked up. "Yes, but that's so --- "
"Good. You and Mikaelian take the floater." He handed Harry the memo. "The Coast Guard is waiting for you bayside."
With a sigh, Harry gulped his coffee. Garreth shoved the file drawer closed and stood up.
They left, pulling on raincoats.
Driving out of the parking lot, Harry headed toward the Embarcadero. The city flowed past the car, muted by fog, swathed in it. The radio crackled and murmured, dispatching officers across the city. Foghorns hooted.
"Let's try to get out at a reasonable time tonight, shall we?" Harry asked. "Lien wants to feed us supper before it mummifies keeping warm."
"Us? You're asking me over again?" Garreth shook his head. "Harry, I can't keep eating your groceries. If nothing else, Lien's cooking is changing my name to Girth Mikaelian." He ruefully ran a thumb inside his snug belt.
"She'll have my hide if I don't bring you. Lacking a houseful of kids..." Harry's smile did not hide an old regret in his voice. "...she has only you and her art class kids to mother. Don't fight it."
There had been weeks after Marti's death when only Lien kept him from being a basket case. Garreth owed her a great deal. "I'll come."
The car swung onto the Embarcadero. Harry hugged the wheel, as though leaning forward helped to see better. "Sometimes I wonder what it would be like living where there's a real summer, and maybe even sunshine in August."
"Come along the next time I go to Davis to visit my kid and find out."
They turned in at the pier number on the memo and drove down to a barrier of vehicles. There they climbed out. Fog enveloped them, cold and damp. Garreth shoved his hands in his coat pockets and huddled deeper in the collar as he and Harry walked the rest of the way.
Near the end of the pier the usual post-violent-death circus had set up: uniformed officers, Crime Lab, Photo Lab, an ambulance crew from the medical examiner's office along with an assistant ME, and this time, Coast Guard, too.
"Hi, Jim," Harry said to one of the Coast Guard officers.
Jim Birkinshaw smiled. "Hell of a way to start a morning, Harry."
Garreth moved as close to the body as possible without interfering with the photographer. The victim had been stretched out on his back, but he still looked less than funeral-parlor neat. His rumpled coat had twisted up around his neck, and a spreading stain of salt water surrounded him.
Strange how you could always tell the dead ones, Garreth reflected. They looked different from living people, even different from someone unconscious. They lay awkwardly, slack, collapsed into postures no vital body would assume.
He pulled out his notebook and began taking down a description of the corpse. White male, brown hair of medium length, 170 to 180 pounds. Five ten? Garreth found estimation difficult in a horizontal position. Red suit coat with black velvet collar and lapels, black trousers, black boots with inseam zippers. Evening wear. Garreth moved around the outside of the group at work to look at the face for an age determination.
Birkinshaw said, "I don't think he'd been in the water long. The pilot of the Alcatraz excursion boat spotted the coat on his first run out this morning."
Harry shook his head. "A wonderful treat for the tourists."
Garreth jotted down the discovery details, then wrote a dollar sign. Even wet, the clothes retained a quiet elegance. That kind of understatement came with a high price tag. The carefully manicured nails on the out flung gray hands matched the clothing.
The photographer stepped back, giving way to the assistant ME, Catherine Ho. In the course of examining the dead man, she pulled loose the twisted coat. Garreth caught his breath, a gasp echoed by others around him. The action rolled the dead man's head and exposed a gaping wound in the throat, a slash stretching from ear to ear and so deep that spine showed.
Deadpan, Birkinshaw said, "Almost took his head clear off. Looks like his neck's broken, too."
Garreth grimaced. Birkinshaw had known...had been waiting gleefully for the moment the rest of them discovered it. Garreth knelt down beside the corpse and studied the face with its half-open eyes. Age, midthirties, he wrote. Eyes, blue. The face showed care, too...closely shaved, sideburns and mustache trimmed.
He stopped writing, staring at the dead man's neck...not at the puckered gray edges of the wound, but at a mark below it to one side of the adams apple, almost black on the pale skin and about the size of a silver dollar. A feeling of deja vu touched him.
The mark caught the attention of others, too. Birkinshaw nudged Harry. "Maybe he was on his way home from a heavy date when he was attacked. That's the biggest hickey I've ever seen."
Not a hickey, Garreth thought. He made a few as an adolescent and they never looked like this. It reminded him more of the marks he saw on people's arms from subcutaneous hemorrhage left by a lab tech's poor venous stick. "What can you tell us?" he asked Ho.
She stood up. "I'd say he died between six and nine hours ago. Cause of death seems obvious. It probably happened without warning. There's no indication of a struggle. No defensive wounds on the hands or arms. The wound is a single continuous incision. From the depth, someone of considerable strength inflicted it. Do you want us to call you when we're ready to start the autopsy?"
"Please," Harry said. "All right, Mik-san, let's see what he can tell us about himself."
Kneeling beside the body, Harry and Garreth searched it. The hands were bare, but pale skin on the left third finger and right wrist indicated the removal of a ring and watch. Married, Garreth thought. Left-handed.
In the coat they found a handkerchief, not monogrammed, and a half-empty pack of sodden cigarettes along with a disposable butane lighter. Nothing helpful, like matchbooks that might tell them where he had been.
The items went into a property envelope.
No billfold in the hip pockets of his trousers. Nothing in the left front pocket, either.
"Looks like robbery," Birkinshaw said. "Dressed like he is, he'd be a good target. Junkies, maybe?"
"Why break his neck on top of cutting his throat?" Garreth dug into the last trouser pocket. His fingers touched something. "Cross your fingers and hope we're lucky, Harry."
He turned the pocket inside out to remove the object without touching it, on the off chance that the killer might have touched it, too, and left a fingerprint. A room key for the Westin San Francisco fell into the clear plastic envelope a Crime Lab man held out.
Harry took the envelope. "Overlooked by our killer, you think?"
"Maybe he was interrupted before he could finish searching the pockets," Garreth said.
Harry murmured noncommittally then looked up at the Coast Guard officer. "Jim, will you check the bay charts and see if you can give us an idea where our boy here went into the water?"
"Right. We'll call you on it."
The ambulance attendants zipped the dead man into a plastic bag and loaded him on a stretcher. Thinking about the bruise, Garreth watched them lift the stretcher into the ambulance. Where had he seen a mark like that before?
He asked Harry about it on the way back to the car.
Harry frowned. "I don't remember a case of ours like that."
"It wasn't our case, I'm sure." But he had still seen that mark, and heard someone else making a snide remark about a super-hickey. He wished he remembered more.
3
At the Westin Harry showed his badge to the desk clerk and held up the envelope with the key. "Who has this room?"
The clerk looked up the registration form and handed it to Harry. "Mr. Gerald Mossman."
Copying the information, Garreth saw a Denver address and a company name: Kitco, Inc. The room rate seemed lower than usual. "Is this a convention rate?"
The desk clerk nodded. "For the Association of American Homebuilders. They're holding an exhibition at Moscone West."
Two blocks away. He raised a brow at Harry.
Who said, "Well I don't know about you, but I'm driving."
He parked in one of several open handicap slots, Kojack light prominently displayed on the roof. Signs in the level one lobby area welcomed the AAH and pointed the way to the exhibition hall. They headed for it. The company name on Mossman's hotel registration suggested he was probably an exhibitor. Hopefully with other company reps at their booth who might help them trace Mossman's whereabout last night.
At the doorway, however, a young man barred their way. "No admittance without a badge."
With a quick, wicked grin at each other, Garreth and Harry produced their badge cases and dangled them before the young man.
He looked down his nose at them. "Those are the wrong --- " He broke off, coloring, and stammered, "Excuse me . . . I meant --- I'm supposed --- may I help you? Do you have business here?"
"Yes," Harry said. "Where is the Kitco display?"
"There's a floor diagram just inside." He hastily stepped aside.
The diagram located Kitco at the far end of the hall. There they found a woman and two men, smartly dressed and flawlessly groomed, working before a photographic montage of kitchen cabinets. Leaflets and catalogs lay on tables at the front of the booth.
The woman turned a brilliant, professional smile on them. "Good morning. I'm Susan Pegans. Kitco manufactures cabinets in a wide variety of styles and woods to fit any decor. May I show you our brochure?"
Harry said, "I'm looking for Gerald Mossman. He's with this exhibit, isn't he?"
"Mr. Mossman is our sales manager, but he's not here at the moment."
"Can you tell me where he is?"
"I'm afraid not. Is there anything I can do for you?"
Garreth opened his notebook. "Does he fit this description?" He read off the dead man's.
Her smile faltered. "Yes. Steve... "
The taller of the two men left the people he was talking to and came over. "I'm Steven Verneau. Is there a problem?"
Harry showed his identification. "When did you last see Gerald Mossman?"
The blusher on the woman's face became garish paint over a bloodless face. "What's happened to him?"
Harry eyed her. "Could we talk somewhere away from this crowd, Mr. Verneau?"
"Sure."
"Steve," the woman began.
Verneau patted her arm. "I'm sure it's nothing. This way, Inspector." He led them out to the lobby area and quiet corner area. "Now, what's this about?"
There never seemed to be any easy way of saying it. Harry made it quick. "We've found a man in the bay with Mossman's hotel key in his pocket."
Verneau stared, shocked. "In the bay? He fell in and drowned?"
Garreth said carefully, "We think he was dead before he went in. He appears to have been robbed."
"Someone killed him?" A passing pair of men turned to stare. Verneau lowered his voice. "Are you sure it's Gary?"
Garreth gave him the description.
Verneau sucked in a breath. "That could be Gary. He has a coat like that."
"We need to have someone come and identify him," Harry said. "Will you?"
Verneau paled, but nodded. "Just let me give Alex and Susan some excuse for being gone."
4
Garreth had never liked the morgue. From the first required visits during training at the Police Academy, he had seen it as a place of harsh light and hard surfaces, where sound echoed coldly and the stainless steel and tile surfaces turned people into distorted reflections. It reeked of decomp, an odor that pervaded everything, hitting him as he came in the door and lingering tenaciously in his nostrils for hours after he left. This year he had come to despise the place, particularly the freezer with its rows of sheet-covered gurneys. No matter that he intellectually recognized the necessity of the morgue, and that the dead here served the living. Every time he heard the click of the freezer latch and the oiled hiss of its hinges, he relived the nightmare when the face under the sheet inside was Marti's and half his soul had been torn away.
He stood with face set, ready to catch Verneau if need be, though the attendant brought the body to the public viewing area and folded back the sheet just enough to reveal the face, not the neck.
Verneau swallowed hard. "Son of a bitch. Yes...that's Gary."
The attendant lowered the sheet and they left the morgue.
"When was the last time you saw him?" Harry asked.
Verneau sucked in a breath. "Last night. The exhibition hall closes at seven and we walked out together."
"Do you know what his plans were for the evening?"
"Eating out with conventioneers, I suppose. He did Monday night, and that was his usual practice...to make personal contacts, you know."
"Did he happen to mention any names, or where he was going?"
"Not to me."
"A watch and ring were taken from him. Can you describe them?"
Verneau shook his head. "Maybe his wife can. She's in Denver." He sucked in another breath. "God, this doesn't seem real."
Garreth said, "He had a large bruise on his neck. Do you remember seeing it last night?"
"Bruise?" Verneau blinked. "I --- no, I don't remember. How did this happen? Wouldn't a mugger just rob him? He wouldn't have resisted; he always said you give them what they want, that property can always be replaced. He never carried much in the evening anyway...one credit card and enough cash for the evening. Would someone kill him because he didn't have much?"
Harry caught Garreth's eye. "Why don't I take Mr. Verneau back to the Moscone and talk to people there, then go to Mossman's hotel. You get on the horn to Denver PD and have them contact the wife. See if she knows his enemies. Tell them we need a description of his jewelry to put out to the pawnshops. See you later."
5
Garreth hung up the phone. Denver was sending someone to break the news to Mossman's wife. They promised to get back about the jewelry. A message from the Coast Guard lay on Harry's desk. According to their charts, the body had most likely gone in somewhere along the southern end of the Embarcadero and the China Basin, although probably not as far south as Potrero's Point. Garreth noted the information in his notebook. They would need to talk to people in that area. Perhaps someone had seen something.
Serruto came out of his office to sit on a corner of Garreth's desk. "What's the story on the floater?"
Garreth gave him what they had so far.
Serruto frowned. "Robbery? Odd the thief didn't take the hotel key, too, so he could rifle the room."
"Unless it's only supposed to look like a robbery."
The lieutenant tugged at an ear. "You have other thoughts?"
"There's a bruise on his neck." Garreth held a circle of his thumb and first finger against his own neck to indicate the size and location. "I remember another case in the last several years with the same kind of mark, also with a broken neck."
Serruto pursed his lips for a minute, then shook his head. "Doesn't ring any bells. Keep thinking. Maybe you'll remember more." He went back to his office.
Garreth looked around the room. Evelyn Kolb and Art Schneider worked at their desks. He asked them if they remembered the case.
Kolb pumped the top of the thermos she brought to work every day, filling her cup with steaming tea. "Not me. Art?"
He shook his head. "Sorry."
Garreth sighed. Damn. If only he could remember something more. Like who worked the case.
Loud footsteps brought his attention around to the door. Earl Faye and Dean Centrello stormed in.
He raised his brows. "You two didn't wreck another car, did you?"
Faye flung himself into his chair. Centrello snarled, "You know the Isenmeier thing? Turkey tried to cut up his girlfriend? Well, we have everything set to arrest the dude, statements from the neighbors and a warrant in the works. Then the lady says it's off. She refuses to press charges. Seems he asked her to many him."
"Save the warrant," Schneider said. "You can use it next time."
"Lord, I'd hate to see this fox chopped up." Faye rolled his eyes. "Everything she wears is either transparent or painted on. The first time we went to see --- "
Kolb cocked a brow at Garreth. "Comes a pause in the day's occupation that is known as the fairytale hour."
Faye frowned but continued talking. Garreth listened with amusement. Faye was walking proof that the art of storytelling remained alive and well. If short on anecdotes, he waxed eloquent on women or sports, or described crime scenes in graphic detail. That thought nudged something in Garreth's head. He suspended all other thought, groping for the nudge. Only to be interrupted by the telephone. His feeling of being close to something faded.
With a sigh, Garreth reached for the receiver. "Homicide, Mikaelian ."
"We're starting the autopsy on your floater, Inspector."
Garreth gathered a handful of wintergreen candy from a sack in his desk to eat downstairs...the pungent odor of the candy his best defense against the morgue smell.
6
Not every room in the ME's office echoed. The autopsy room with its row of trough-like steel tables did not. It always sounded horribly quiet...no footsteps or casual chatter, only the droning voices of the pathologists dictating their findings into the microphones dangling from the ceiling and the whisper of running water washing down the tables, carrying away the blood.
Ho had already opened the abdominal cavity and removed the viscera when Garreth came in and stood at the head of the table, hands buried in his suit coat pockets. She nodded a greeting at him, never breaking her monologue.
The water ran clear this time, Garreth noticed. Even that in the sink at the foot of the table, usually rosy from the organs floating in it awaiting sectioning, sat colorless. The doctor examined the organs one at a time, slicing them like loaves of bread with quick, sure strokes of her knife and peering at each section...and tossing some slices into specimen containers. She opened the trachea its full length and snipped apart the heart to check each of its chambers and valves. As Garreth watched, a crease appeared between her eyes. She moved back to the empty gray shell that had been a man and went over the skin surface carefully, even rolling the body on its side to peer at the back. She explored the edges of the neck wound.
The neck had another mark, too, Garreth noticed, one that had been hidden before by the dead man's shirt. A thin red line ran around, biting deep on the sides. Strangulation, too...or something on a chain ripped off?
"Trouble?" he asked.
Ho looked up. "Exsanguination is indeed the cause of death. However..."
Garreth waited expectantly.
"Not because his throat was cut. That occurred postmortem. So did the broken neck."
Deja vu struck him again. Victim bled to death but the knife wounds and broken neck were inflicted after death. Garreth strained to remember more details, something that would identify the case.
"He didn't bleed to death internally and I can't find any exterior wound to account for --- "
"What about the bruise?" Garreth interrupted. There had been something else strange about that bruise on the other man. Now, what had it been?
"...for a blood loss of that magnitude," the doctor went on with a frown at Garreth, "unless we assume that the punctures in the jugular vein were made by needles and the blood drained that way."
That was the other thing about the bruise! "Two punctures, right? About an inch and a half apart, in the middle of the bruise?"
She regarded him gravely. "I could have used your crystal ball before I began, Inspector. It would have saved me work."
Garreth smiled. Inside, however, he swore. He remembered that much, those facts, but still nothing to help him locate the case in the files, not a victim or detective's name.
The remainder of the autopsy proceeded uneventfully. Lack of water in the lungs established that the victim had been dead before entering the water. The skull and brain showed no signs of bruises or hemorrhage to indicate that he might have been struck and knocked unconscious. The stomach contained no food, only liquid.
"Looks like he died some time after his last meal. We'll analyze the liquid," the doctor said.
Garreth bet it proved alcoholic.
When the body was on the way back to the freezer, Garreth prepared to leave. He had missed lunch but with no appetite perhaps he should just go on to the convention center. At least the fog had burned off, leaving a bright, clear day.
Before leaving the ME's, he used one of their phones to call up to Homicide, to John Leyva, their clerk in the outer office. "Has the Denver PD sent me descriptions of some men's jewelry?"
Papers rattled, then: "No," Leyva said, "but a Mrs. Elvira Hogue wants you to call her."
One of the witnesses to the Mission Street bodega shooting. Garreth reached for his notebook. "Thanks...I have the number," he said as Leyva started to read it off...and dialed it as soon as he broke communication with Homicide. "Mrs. Hogue? This is Inspector Mikaelian. You wanted to talk to me?" She had good news he hoped.
"Yes." Her thin, old-woman's voice came back over the wire. "I saw the boy who did it, and I learned his name."
Garreth pumped a fist. Yes, good news! "That's great!"
"You remember I told you I've seen him in the neighborhood before? Well, he was here this morning again, bold as brass, talking to that Hambright girl up the street. I walked very close to them and I heard her call him Wink."
"Mrs. Hogue, thank you very much!"
"You catch that skunk. Senor Campera was a nice gentleman."
Garreth headed for Records to check the name Wink through the moniker file.
They came up with a make, one Leroy Martin Luther O'Hare, called Wink, as in "quick as a," for the way he snatched purses in his juvenile delinquency days by sweeping past victims on a skateboard. Purse snatching had been only one of his offenses. Wink added burglary and auto theft to his yellow sheet as he approached legal adulthood, though he had not been convicted of either charge.
Garreth headed for his personal car in the parking lot --- a Prussian red Datsun ZX he and Marti had given each other their last anniversary --- and with Wink's photograph tucked among five others of young black males for a photo lineup, drove to Mrs. Hogue's house.
She quickly picked out Wink. "That's him; that's the one I saw this morning and the one I saw coming out of the bodega after I heard the shooting."
Garreth called Serruto.
"We'll get a warrant for him," the lieutenant said.
Garreth visited Wink's mother and girlfriend, Rosella Hambright. He also talked to the neighbors of both. No one, of course, offered any help. Garreth gained the impression that even Wink's mother hardly knew the person Garreth asked about. The neighbors denied any knowledge of comings and goings from Mrs. O'Hare's or Miss Hambright's apartment.
"Hey, man, I gots enough to do chasin' rats over here without watchin' someone else over there," they said, or else: "You wrong about Wink. He no good, but he no holdup man. He never owned no gun."
Garreth dropped word of wanting Wink into a few receptive ears whose owners knew he would reward good information, then he headed for the Westin. He would see Serruto about staking out the mother's and girlfriend's apartments. For now, he better check in with Harry before his partner put out an APB on him.
7
He missed Harry at the Westin and arrived back in Homicide to find Harry starting reports. After a rundown of Garreth's day, he sighed. "So we both came up empty."
"Except for identifying our bodega gunman and the odd results of the autopsy." Garreth rolled a report form into his typewriter. "Did I miss anything interesting at the Moscone?"
"Just Susan Pegans fainting dead away when we told her about Mossman...and here I thought women swooning went out with whalebone corsets. No one I talked to, conventioneers or other exhibitors around Kitco's booth, saw him last night or knew where he was going."
Garreth began his report. "Find anything useful in his room?"
"Nothing telling us where he went. He had clothes, a couple of paperbacks, a return plane ticket to Denver. He left his exhibitor's badge...and did go out light, like Verneau said. Personal keys, several other credit cards, two hundred in cash, and another two hundred in traveler's checks were under a false bottom of his shaving kit. No billfold, so he must have had that on him when he was killed. He made two calls, one Monday and one last night, both a little after seven in the evening and both to his home phone in Denver."
"Tomorrow why don't I check the cab companies to see if one of them took a fare of Mossman's description anywhere last night?"
"Do that."
Garreth remembered then that he needed to talk to the lieutenant. He knocked on Serruto's door. "Got a minute?"
"If it's about the warrant on O'Hare, we have it. There's an APB out on him, too."
"I'd like to stake out his mother's and girlfriend's apartments. He's bound to get in touch with one or the other."
Serruto leaned back in his chair. "Why don't we see if the APB and your street contacts locate him first? Two stakeouts use a lot of men." He did not say it, but Garreth heard, nonetheless: We can't spend that much manpower on one small-time crook.
Garreth nodded, sighing inwardly --- all were not equal in the eyes of the law --- and went back to his typewriter.
An hour later he and Harry checked out for the night.
8
Garreth always liked going home with Harry. The house had the same atmosphere Marti gave their apartment, a sense of sanctuary. The job ended at the door. Inside, he and Harry became ordinary men. Where Marti had urged him to talk, however, Lien bled away tensions with diversion and serenity. A judicious scattering of Oriental objects among the house's contemporary furnishings reflected the culture of her Taiwanese childhood and Harry's Japanese grandparents. The paintings on the walls, mostly Lien's and including examples of her commercial artwork, reflected Oriental tradition and moods.
Lien stared at them in disbelief. "Home before dark? How did you do it?"
Harry lowered his voice to a conspiratorial tone. "We went over the wall. If someone calls, you haven't seen us." He kissed her with a great show of passion. "What's for supper? I'm starved."
"Not lately." She patted his stomach fondly. "Both of you sit down; I'll bring tea."
Strong and laced with rum...an example of what Garreth considered a happy blend of West and East. Between sips of tea, he pulled off his shoes and tie. One by one his nerves loosened. These days, he reflected, Harry's house felt more like home than his own apartment did.
During dinner Lien monopolized the conversation, heading off shop talk with anecdotes from her own day. She brushed by the frustrations of finishing drawings for a fashion spread in Sunday's Chronicle to talk about the art appreciation classes she taught at various grade schools in the afternoons. Garreth listened bemused. Her kids came from a different world than he saw everyday. Free of drugs, well fed and cared for, bright-eyed with promise. Sometimes he wondered if she deliberately told only cheerful stories. Not that he objected; he liked hearing about a pleasant world populated by happy, friendly people.
Not that he regretted becoming a cop, either. Just...sometimes he wondered what he might be doing now, what kind of world he would live in, if he had finished college...if he had been good enough to win a football scholarship like his older brother Shane, if he and Judith had not married so young, if she had not gotten pregnant his sophomore year and had to stop working, leaving them with no money to continue school.
Or would things have been any different? He always wanted to be like his father. He loved visiting the station and sometimes riding along in his father's patrol car, learning how to handle a nightstick, going to the firing range. While Shane had been starring in backyard scrimmages and Little League football, Garreth played cops and robbers. Police work seemed a natural choice when he had to go to work.
After dinner, helping Lien with the dishes, he asked, "Do you believe people really have free choice, or are they pushed in inevitable directions by social conditioning?"
She smiled at him. "Of course they have choices. Background may limit or influence, but the choices are still there."
He considered that. "Consulting I Ching isn't a contradiction of that?"
"Certainly not. If anything, the Sage supports the idea that people have control over their futures. He merely advises of the possibilities." She looked up in concern. "What's the matter? Are the dreadful broody what-ifs chewing at you?"
He smiled at her understanding. "Sort of."
Maybe what really chewed on him was Mossman, who had lost all choice. He worked at keeping emotional distance from murder victims without becoming indifferent to the crime. Otherwise, he knew, he could screw up his head and burn out. Mossman and his peculiar bruise, though, haunted him...maybe because of the bruise, whose twin case eluded him? It lurked in the back of his mind the rest of the evening, even through the excitement of watching the Giants win a 1-0 squeaker. He stared at the TV screen with Harry, trying to pull the case out of his memory and asking himself who would stick two needles into someone's jugular and drain out all his blood. It sounded like something from a horror movie.
Garreth had no particular desire to go home to his empty apartment, so after leaving Harry and Lien, he drove back to the Hall of Justice. He sat in the near-empty office doodling on a blank sheet of paper and letting his mind wander. Bruise...punctures...blood loss. He recalled a photograph of a man in a bathtub, arm trailing down over the side to the floor. A voice said, "Welcome to Homicide, Mikaelian."
He sat bolt upright. Earl Fay's voice! It had been Faye and Centrello's case. Faye had told Garreth --- new to the detail then --- all about it in elaborate, gory detail.
Garreth scrambled for the file drawers. Everything came back to him now. The date was late October two years ago, just about Halloween, one of the factors which fascinated Faye, he remembered.
"Maybe it was a cult of some kind. They needed the blood for their rituals."
Methodically, Garreth searched. The file should still be here. The case remained open, unsolved. And there it was...in a bottom drawer.
Seated cross-legged on the floor, Garreth opened the murder book. Cleveland Morris Adair, an Atlanta businessman, had been found dead, wrists slashed, in the bathtub of his suite at the Mark Hopkins on October 29, 1981. The death seemed like suicide until the autopsy revealed two puncture wounds in the middle of a bruise on the neck, and although Adair bled to death, his wrists had been slashed postmortem by someone applying a great deal of pressure. That someone had also broken Adair's neck. Stomach contents showed a high concentration of alcohol. The red coloring of the bathwater proved to be nothing more than grenadine from the bar in his suite.
Statements from cabdrivers and hotel personnel established that Adair had left the hotel alone on the evening of October 28 and gone to North Beach. He had returned at 2:15 A.M., again alone. A maid coming in to clean Sunday morning found his body.
Hotel staff in the lobby remembered most of the people entering the hotel around the time Adair had. By the time registered and known persons were sorted out, only three possible suspects remained, and two of them were eventually traced and ruled out. That left the third, who came through the lobby just five minutes after Adair. A bellboy described her in detail: about twenty, five-ten, good figure, dark red hair, green eyes, wearing a green dress plunging to the waistline in front and slit to the hip on the side, carrying a large shoulder bag. A high end call girl, the bellboy thought, since the few times he saw her before, she had been coming in with different men.
What interested Faye and Centrello about her was that no one saw her leave. Their efforts to locate her among the city's call girls failed. Nor did they find any wild-eyed crazies who might have made Adair their sacrifice in some kinky ritual. The Crime Lab turned up no useful physical evidence, and robbery was apparently no motive; Adair's valuables had not been touched.
Garreth reread the autopsy report several times. Wounds inflicted by someone applying a great deal of pressure. Someone stronger than usual? The deaths had striking similarities and differences, but a crawling down his spine told him that his gut reaction believed more in the similarities than in the differences. Two out-of-towners staying at nice hotels whose blood had been drained through needles in their jugulars, then the bodies doctored to make it seem they bled out other ways. It had a ritual sound about it. No wonder Faye and Centrello hunted cultists.
After a jaw-cracking yawn, Garreth glanced down at his watch and was shocked to find it almost three o'clock. At least he would not notice the emptiness of the apartment now. He would be lucky to reach the bedroom before he collapsed.
9
Every eye in the squad room turned on Garreth as he tried to sneak in. From the middle of the meeting, Serruto said, "Nice of you to join us this morning, Inspector."
Garreth sighed. He had already gotten the same dry comment from John Leyva as he breezed by the counter in the outer office. "Sorry. A potential witness wouldn't stop talking. Have I missed much?"
"The overnight action. Takananda can fill you in on that later. You've identified the Mission Street shooter. Anything more on him yet?"
"On my way in this morning I rattled some cages close to him," Garreth said. "We'll see what that produces."
"So we're just waiting to collar him, right? How about the floater?"
Garreth let Harry answer while he tried not to yawn. Despite the hour he fell into bed, sunrise woke him as usual.
"I've been awake since five-thirty," he told Harry after the meeting broke up. "So I went to work, rattling cages, like I said." He poured himself a cup of coffee. Do your stuff, caffeine. "Are those the lab and autopsy reports?"
Harry tossed them at Garreth. In return, Garreth handed over the Adair file from his desk. "Read that. I finally remembered where I saw a bruise like Mossman's before."
The lab and autopsy reports told Garreth nothing new. No bloodstains on the clothes, confirming that Mossman did not have his throat cut on the street. However, soiling which analyzed as a mixture of dirt, residue of asphalt, vulcanized rubber, and motor oil suggested Mossman had gone to the bay in the trunk of a car. No surprise there. The autopsy report merely made official what Garreth saw yesterday. Analysis of the stomach contents found a high percentage of alcohol, as he expected.
He glanced at Harry, who sat frowning at the Adair file. "What do you think?"
Harry looked up. "I think we'd better get with Faye and Centrello."
They made it a five-man meeting in Serruto's office.
With both files in front of him, Serruto said, "I see the similarities." He looked over at Harry and Garreth. "Do you want to pool resources with Faye and Centrello?"
Harry said, "I thought I'd give them a chance to take over the case if they want it, since the Adair thing was theirs."
Centrello grimaced. "I don't want it. You two play with the cult crazies for a while. I'll be glad to give you anything I know that isn't in the reports, and if you solve it, the glory is all yours."
Faye looked less certain, but did not contradict his partner. Serruto frowned at the Adair file. "Are you thinking cults on the Mossman thing, too, Harry?"
"It's worth checking out."
"Don't get too tied into it; it didn't solve the Adair killing."
"Words of wisdom," Harry said as they left Serruto's office.
"You know, both men had alcohol in their stomachs, so they were drinking not long before they died." Garreth pursed his lips. "I wonder if they drank in the same place?"
Harry put on his coat. "Adair went to North Beach. When you call the cab companies, check for North Beach destinations on those trip logs."
Garreth nodded. "Which is going to turn out to be dozens. All the visitors want to experience our night life."
Harry grinned and slapped Garreth's shoulder. "You'll sort them out. That's detective work, Mik-san. Think about me, trying to find someone who knows where Mossman went. I can't believe he didn't mention something to someone."
A thought struck Garreth. He frowned at Harry. "You talked to quite a few people?"
"It seemed like hundreds."
"And no one knew a thing. Maybe he didn't want people to know. He's a married man and if he had something extracurricular going..."
Harry pursed his lips. "Mossman's only calls from his room were to Denver, nothing local. If he had a lady, she would have to be either a member of the convention or someone he met Monday. Susan Pegans fainted when we told her Mossman was dead, and that wasn't even telling her how. Skip the cab companies for now. Let's go chat with our saleswoman."
10
Susan Pegans stared at the detectives with eyes flashing in outrage. "No! Absolutely not! I didn't go anywhere with Gary. He's a very happily married man."
Garreth caught a note of regret as she said it. He bet she would have gone with Mossman in a moment, given an invitation.
"Alex Long and I had dinner in Chinatown with a couple of Iowa contractors and their wives. Ask Alex."
They would, but for the moment, Garreth continued to press her. "Have you seen him spending an unusual amount of time with any single person here?"
"He spent time with everyone. Gary doesn't --- " She broke off, eyes filling with tears. She wiped at them with the handkerchief Garreth handed her. "Gary didn't play at conventions, not ever. He worked. Why do you think he was sales manager?"
"But you knew where he was going Monday night. Verneau said he told all three of you," Harry said.
"Yes, so we would know who had been contacted and not duplicate efforts."
"Yet you didn't think it strange when he said nothing to you about Tuesday night?"
She shrugged, sighing. "I wondered, yes, but...I thought he'd tell us Wednesday. I --- " She broke off again, shaking her head.
"Pity unrequited love," Harry murmured as they left her. "Well, do we take her at her word or start questioning some of the other ladies? You'll have noticed how many really beautiful ones there are here."
"Maybe we ought to think about guys, too," Garreth said. "That would be a better reason for keeping it quiet."
"You talk to beautiful young men, then; I'll stick to the ladies. Just find someone who went out with him."
Garreth found no one. He worked his way across the exhibition hall talking to personnel manning the booths and convention members visiting the booths. As far as he could determine, Mossman had said to hell with the convention on Tuesday. Checking with Harry later, he found his partner having no better luck.
"Maybe you ought to start on the cab companies," Harry said. "I'll keep working here."
"Let me bounce one more idea off you. You mentioned that he may have met someone Monday evening. So let's talk to the people he was with Monday."
"Good idea. Verneau gave me their names." Harry scribbled two names on a notebook page and handed it to him. "You take this pair; I'll see the others."
Garreth made it easy on himself. He rounded up both men and talked to them at the same time, hoping one might stimulate memory in the other. "Where did you go?" he asked them.
Misters Upton and Suarez grinned at each other. "North Beach. That's some entertainment up there."
He gave them a neutral smile. "It has a little of something for everyone. Do you remember the names of the clubs you visited?"
"Why do you want to know about Monday?" Suarez asked. "Wasn't Gary Mossman robbed and killed Tuesday night? That's what's going around."
"We need to know about people he met Monday. Please, try to think. I need the club names."
They looked at each other and shrugged. "We just walked around, stopping anywhere that looked interesting," Upton said. "We'd get a drink, watch a girl or two dance, and go on. I don't remember any of the names."
Neither did Suarez.
"Did you talk to anyone?"
They blinked. "What do you mean?"
Garreth gave them a man-to-man smirk. "You were five guys out on the town alone. Didn't you meet any girls?"
The contractors grinned. "Well, sure. We kind of collected four along the way."
Or were collected by the girls. "Did Mossman pay special attention to any of them? Did he ask one of them back to the hotel?"
"No. He didn't pair up with any of them."
"Do you remember the girls' names? I also need to know if he met anyone outside your group."
Upton hesitated before replying, with a show of straining his memory, "I think Mandy was one of them. I don't remember her last name."
Mandy being the one who came back to the hotel with him, no doubt.
"Lana was another," Suarez said. "Mossman didn't talk to anyone except us and them."
"Describe the girls please." Though what were their chances of finding them by first name, probably not even real ones, and description? Probably zip.
"Except the singer," Upton said.
Garreth looked up from his notebook. "Singer?"
The contractor nodded. "We were in this club --- I don't remember that one's name either --- and Mossman couldn't do anything except stare at this singer. Not that I blamed him. She was something special, and boy could she sing. She kept giving him the eye, too. I remember he hung back as we left, and when I looked around, he was talking to her. Just for a minute, though."
"What did the singer look like?"
Suarez grinned. "A real babe! Tall, and I mean really tall, man. She had these boots with spike heels that made her legs look like they went up to her shoulders. Nice set of jugs, too."
Something like electric shock trailed up Garreth's spine, raising every hair on his body. He stared at Suarez, hardly breathing. "Do you think she was five-ten?"
"Who could tell with those boots? She looked taller than me in them, and I'm six feet."
"What color was her hair?"
"Red. Not that Las Vegas red but darker, like mahogany."
Red-Haired Woman
1
Harry was dubious. "He had a few words with a red-haired singer Monday night. What makes you think he went back for more than that on Tuesday?"
"A feeling."
Certainly he had no other reason. No real evidence connected Mossman to this woman any more than evidence connected Adair to that other redhead. Only the similarity in height and coloring suggested that the two women might even be the same. Still...two mysterious deaths and two memorable redheads...
Harry quirked a brow at him. "A feeling...like the ones your grandmother has?" He sang the Twilight Zone theme: "Doo-doo doo-doo."
If only. Harry might consider his Grandma Doyle full of blarney and superstition but everyone in the family took her Feelings seriously. They rarely missed. Harry himself had witnessed one instance, when she came for a visit after they learned Marti was pregnant. At Harry's with them, watching his brother play for LA, she went outside suddenly, saying she could not bear to watch Shane get hurt. Sure enough, just before the half, he went under a pile-up. Scratch one knee and one pro football career. Let Harry call it coincidence; Garreth wished he had some of that gift.
"No, it's just a hunch. But I want to check out this redhead. Crazies come in all shapes and sizes."
Harry considered. "That I can go along with. First we need to see if Mossman went back to North Beach Tuesday." He checked his watch. "Too bad the evening doorman isn't on duty yet. He might remember Mossman catching a cab. Let's get on those cab companies, then."
At the Hall they let their fingers do the walking...still a slow process. Each call met the same initial response: did they have any idea how many pickups the company made at the Westin in an evening!
Garreth tried to simplify their task. "This would be for a single passenger..." Easier to find on their trip logs since he estimated most of the fares would be couples or groups. "...picked up between eight and eight-thirty." Figuring Mossman used an hour or so to return to the hotel, shower, call home, and dress in his red coat.
By the end of the afternoon he and Harry learned that only six cabs from four companies picked up single fares in that time period. Four went to North Beach, one to the Opera House in the Civic Center, one to the Haight-Ashbury district. Yes, those drivers routinely picked up fares at the Westin.
Now they needed to determine if any of those fares were Mossman.
Harry checked his watch again and stood, stretching. "The evening doorman might be on duty now. Let's go show him Mossman's picture."
And the cabbies, too.
The doorman did remember Mossman...at least the coat...but not the cab company nor the destination he gave the driver. They missed the driver whose fare had gone to the opera but eventually caught the others. The one remembered his Haight-Asbury fare, and it was not Mossman, nor was one of those going to North Beach. The remaining three drivers could not identify Mossman's photo.
"That doesn't mean I couldn't have taken him," one female driver said. "I just don't remember him. They get in, ride quietly, don't stiff me on the tip or give me a big memorable one and they're just another fare, you know?"
Finally Harry called it quits. While they typed up reports back at the office, he said, "What do you say to taking Lien out for a change? I'll call her, and you make reservations for three somewhere."
Garreth shook his head. "Tonight you have her to yourself. I'm going to grab a quick bite somewhere and fall into bed early."
"You sure?" Harry whipped his report out of the typewriter and signed it after a fast proofread.
"Go home to your wife."
Harry waved on his way out.
Garreth kept typing. Some time later Evelyn Kolb came in and picked up her tea thermos. "Did you get your teletype from Denver? I think Leyva put it under something on your desk."
"Under?" Under, for God's sake. It could have vanished forever.
But he found it under the bodega murder book...a description of Mossman's jewelry. A man's gold Rolex with functions doing everything but answering the telephone; a plain gold man's wedding band, size 8 inscribed: B.A. to G.M. 9-4-73.
Next week was their wedding anniversary. What a hell of a present.
The last item caught his interest even more than the Rolex...a sterling silver pendant two inches long, shaped in the outline of a fish with the Greek word for fish inside the outline. Was that enough silver to bother stealing?
Maybe the killer just disliked Christian symbols. Faye and Centrello looked at cults in the Adair murder.
The teletype went on to report that Mossman's wife knew of no enemies, just business rivals. Of course, that would have to be checked out. For now he typed up the jewelry descriptions for a flier to distribute to the pawnshops, then finished his reports.
2
"No more. Bu yao," Garreth said to the waitress who extended the coffeepot toward his half-empty cup.
Instead of catching a quick bite, he had come to his favorite Chinese place, Huong's. A hole-in-the-wall greasy chopsticks eatery up an alley off Grant Avenue that served some of the best fried rice and egg rolls in San Francisco. Marti had loved the food, too. For Huong's, they learned to use chopsticks and ignored the greasy smoke that seeped out of the kitchen, covering the walls and Chinese signs on them with a coat of dingy gray. And they had Lien teach them enough Chinese to order, and tease the waitress.
With a nod and a smile, the girl turned away.
He drained the cup and stood, reaching for the check with one hand and into his pocket for the tip with the other. At the cash register he paid the withered little old woman almost hidden from sight by the machine. "Delicious, as always, Mrs. Huong."
She smiled in return, bobbing her head. "Come back again, Inspector."
"Count on it."
Outside, he walked down the steep alley to Grant Avenue and stood on the sidewalk, surrounded by passing evening throngs of tourists and the bright kaleidoscope of shop windows and neon signs with their Chinese pictographs. Rather than go home, maybe he should turn over a few rocks in Wink O'Hare's neighborhood. This was about the time of day the little vermin was most likely to stick his head out of his hole. On the other hand, just a few blocks up the hill, Grant Avenue intersected with Columbus Avenue and Broadway in the beginning of North Beach's bright-lights section, and somewhere among the bars and clubs sang a tall red-haired woman who might or might not be involved in murder.
He stared up the hill, weighing the choices. Finding Wink should have priority --- he still had the gun he had presumably used to shoot the bodega's owner --- but evening in North Beach frankly appealed to Garreth far more than Wink's turf. He had his sources keeping eyes and ears open, and as long as he was on his own time anyway...
He turned uphill.
Chinatown gave way to blocks of glittering, garish signs proclaiming the presence of countless clubs. Barkers paced the sidewalks, calling to passersby in a raucous chorus...beckoning, wheedling, leering, each promising the ultimate in exotic entertainment inside his club. Garreth absorbed it all, color and noise, as he threaded his way through the crowd...also keeping alert for unnecessary bumps against him and fingers in his pockets. He spotted some familiar faces...about the time they recognized him, too, and swiftly faded into the crowd.
He hailed a barker he had met on previous occasions. "How's business, Sammy?"
"All over legal age, Inspector," Sammy replied quickly. "Come on in and see the show, folks! All live action with the most gorgeous girls in San Francisco!"
"Any redheads, Sammy?"
Sammy eyed him. "Sure. Anything you want."
"Maybe a very tall redhead, say five ten, with green eyes?"
The barker's eyes narrowed. "This redhead got a name? Hey, mister!" he called to a passing couple. "Your timing is perfect. The show is about to start. Bring the little lady in and warm up together. What do you want her for, Mikaelian?"
"A date, Sammy. What else? Who do you know with that description? She sings in the area."
Sammy laughed. "Are you kidding? We've got more showgirl redheads than the stores have Barbie dolls. Come on in and see the show, folks! Real adult entertainment, live on our stage! Our girls have curves in places most girls don't have places, and they'll show you every one!"
"I need names, Sammy," Garreth said patiently.
Sammy sighed, not patiently. "Names. Who knows names? Try the Cul-de-Sac across the street. There's a red-haired singer I seen there. And maybe in the Pussywillow, too. Now, will you move on, man? You're spoiling my rhythm."
Grinning, Garreth moved across the street into the Cul-de-Sac. Yes, a barmaid said when he ordered a rum and Coke, they had a red-haired singer. She came on after the dancer.
He sat down at the bar, which ran around the edge of the stage. A nearly-naked blonde dragged an enormous cushion out onto the stage and proceeded to writhe on it in simulated ecstasy. In the midst of her throes, she rolled over, saw Garreth watching her with amusement, and said in a bored monotone, "Hi, honey. And what's your day been like?"
"About like yours, unfortunately, hours wasted grinding away at thin air," he replied.
A fleeting grin crossed the blonde's face.
The singer appeared presently. Garreth left. The redhead's hair color was bottle-bred brass and she looked old enough to have sung on the Barbary Coast itself.
He talked to barkers on down the street, collecting a notebook full of possibilities, but checking them out, he found women with the wrong color of red, wrong height, and wrong age. In two hours he checked over a dozen clubs with no success and stood on the sidewalk outside of the last with an ache working its way up from his feet. He looked around, seeking inspiration.
"Hi, baby. All alone?" a husky voice asked behind him.
Garreth turned. A woman in her thirties with elaborately curled dark hair arched a plucked, painted eyebrow at him. "Hi, Velvet," he said. Her real name, he knew from busting her when he worked Patrol, was Catherine Bukato, but on the street and with the johns, she always went by Velvet. "How's your daughter?"
Velvet smiled. "Almost twelve and more beautiful every day. My mother sends me pictures of her regularly. I may even go home to see her this winter. You up here working or playing tonight?"
"I'm looking for a woman."
Velvet hitched the shoulder strap of her handbag higher. "You're playing my song, baby."
"The woman I want is red-haired, young, and very tall. Taller than I am. She sings somewhere around here. Would you happen to know anyone like that?"
Velvet's eyes narrowed shrewdly. "I tell you what. My feet are killing me. Why don't you play like a john who has to work up his courage? Buy me a drink where I can sit down for a while and I'll think on it."
Garreth smiled. "Pick somewhere."
She chose the nearest bar and they found seats in a rear booth. She ordered, then kicked off her shoes and stretched her legs out, propping her feet up on the seat on the far side of the booth.
She closed her eyes. "That's what I needed. You know, for a cop you're almost human, Mikaelian."
"Every Thursday night." In the right quarters, inexpensive kindness could reap valuable benefits. Velvet's sharp eyes and ears missed little on the street.
A fact she knew he knew. Opening her eyes, she said, "So let me pay for the drink. Who's this woman you're looking for?"
Garreth gave her a detailed description.
Velvet's drink came. She sipped it slowly. "Tall? A singer? Yeah, I've seen someone like that. I can't remember where, though. What did she rip off?"
"I just want to talk to her."
Velvet's drawn brows rose again, skeptical. "Oh, sure."
"If you have a chance, will you ask around? Its important I find her."
Velvet eyed him a moment, but then nodded. "How can I refuse someone who always asks about my kid? You have a kid, Mikaelian?"
"An eight-year-old boy named Brian."
For the remainder of the time it took her to finish her drink, they talked children and showed each other the pictures they carried. As Garreth handed back Velvet's snapshot of her daughter, the prostitute started to laugh.
"What's funny?" Garreth asked.
Her teeth gleamed in the dimness of the bar. "What a pair we are, a cop and a hooker, sitting in a bar talking about our kids." She drained her glass, sighed, and fished around under the table for her shoes. "Well, time to go back to work. Thanks for the coffee break."
They headed for the door.
"I hope this won't make trouble for you with Richie, getting nothing for the time," Garreth said.
She looked up at him. "Look, if it isn't too much trouble, maybe you could give me a little something, a kind of advance on information I'm going to give you? It'll help with Richie."
He dug into his pocket for his billfold and came up with two tens. "One for Richie Soliere and one for you to buy something for your daughter, all right?"
She folded away the bills with a smile. "Thanks a lot." Then she tossed her head and dropped back into her husky "professional" voice. "Good night, baby."
He watched her walk off into the crowd, then counted what remained in his billfold. The impulsive generosity had nearly cleaned him out. It would make the rest of the swing through North Beach a dry trip. He hoped Velvet gave him a good return on his investment.
3
Rob Cohen raised a brow at Garreth. "That's the third time you've yawned in the last five minutes. You single guys sure lead a fast life."
Harry regarded Garreth sharply, however. "You worked all night after all?"
Garreth shrugged. "I couldn't sleep." He gave Harry a recap of the North Beach canvas. "It was a waste of good shoe leather, though; I didn't find her."
"Maybe you're lucky. Your hexagram this morning was number forty-four, Coming to Meet. 'The maiden is powerful. One should not marry such a maiden.'"
A sudden chill raised the hair down Garreth's spine. He wondered at it. I Ching's prophecies usually neither disturbed nor encouraged him. He thought of Grandma Doyle's Feelings. However, he made himself slap Harry's shoulder. "Don't worry, Taka-san. I have no intention of marrying any maiden in the near future."
Too late he realized that the flip response had been wrong. Harry's almond eyes went grave. "You know the text isn't to be taken literally. What's the matter?"
The chill bit deep into Garreth's gut. "Nothing." A lie? He could not be sure. His chest felt so tight he had trouble breathing. "Guess I'm just superstitious enough not to like having that caution turn up when I'm hunting a woman." He hurriedly changed the subject. "Here's the flier on Mossman's watch, ring, and pendant that's going out to the pawnshops."
Harry read it over. "Good."
The tightness and chill eased in Garreth. "What do you want to do this morning?"
"I think one of us ought to get started checking out cults and the other see if anyone around China Basin saw anything Thursday night." Harry pulled out a quarter. "Flip for it? Loser takes the cults."
Garreth chose tails. The quarter came up heads. Harry grinned as he left for China Basin.
Garreth sat down with the Adair file and read through the reports to see which groups Faye and Centrello had investigated. On the half dozen he found reports on, only one had a formal name, Holy Church of Asmodeus. The others were listed by leaders' names. The groups varied in size, organization, and object of worship. Some seemed to be satanists or devil worshipers. Others appeared to be variations of witchcraft and voodoo. One group claimed to be neo-druids.
All, however, had been rumored to use blood in their ceremonies. A few admitted it, but insisted it was either animal blood or small amounts from members, voluntarily given. Analysis of blood samples on altars and instruments confirmed that most was animal blood. One of the few human samples proved to be A-positive like Adair's, but investigation of the group failed to establish access to Adair by any of the members and more detailed analysis of the blood sample ruled it out as Adair's.
Nevertheless, Garreth called Dennis Kovar in Fraud. "Denny, what complaints have you had in the past year about oddball church and cult groups?"
Kovar laughed. "How much time do you have to listen? I don't need to lift weights after picking up the current file a few times a day. Parents and neighbors are all out for the blood of these groups."
"What about the groups? Do you have word that any of them are using blood?"
Silence came over the line for a moment before Kovar answered. "What are you looking for?" He listened silently to Garreth's reply, then said, "I don't have many complaints about those groups. They aren't asking for monetary donations. They keep a low profile so they won't be noticed. Talk Angelo Chiarelli. He's undercover full-time for Narcotics, but he's fed me information on some of these fraudulent church groups and contacted a few kids in the cults for Missing Persons. Maybe he can help you."
A call to Narcotics produced a promise to pass on Garreth's request. "You understand we can't go calling him every day, and he's pretty busy doing his own job to run errands for other details."
Garreth sighed. "He doesn't have to work on my case. I just want information on blood-using cults he may know about."
"We'll get back to you."
He even called the Humane Society about complaints of people killing and mutilating animals and went out to buy underground papers. When Harry came back to the office around two, they exchanged notes over coffee and doughnuts.
Harry's interviews in China Basin produced nothing for them. The underground classifieds had some cult ads, but no direct means of contacting the groups.
"We'll have to get some scrawny kid straight out of the Academy who can get past their security," Garreth said. "The ASPCA has some complaints of animal mutilation we might follow up on, too."
"What about Chiarelli?"
"Still no word yet. Here's everything Records currently has on the cults Faye and Centrello investigated."
And what, Garreth wondered, leaning back in his chair with a sigh, did it mean until they knew where Mossman had been? Until then, they had no way of establishing opportunity for the cults. Checking movements was treadmill work.
Still, it needed to be done, and over the next four days they visited the cult groups Faye and Centrello listed, then those with ads that their rookie contacted for them. They visited people who had reported animal mutilations to the Humane Society. Garreth did not like most of the cultists he met --- some he detested on sight --- but he found them educational: women who simultaneously attracted and chilled him, people he would have taken for dull businessmen on the street, and some, too, who looked like escapees from Hollywood horror movies. No group, though, had a tall red-haired female member.
None of Mossman's jewelry appeared in the pawnshops.
At the same time, they kept prodding their contacts for Wink O'Hare's hiding place. Garreth spent his evenings in North Beach on a systematic search for the singer.
One week after Gerald Mossman died, Garreth found her.
4
The singer looked every bit the babe Suarez said, and she did tower in boots with six inch heels. Dressed in a satin shirt and jeans, she glided between the tables of the Barbary Now, singing a sentimental Kenny Rogers song. And what a voice. Singing about lighting up his life brought a vivid memory of Marti and a lump in his throat. He had to fight off blurred vision to concentrate on the singer. The red hair, black in shadow, burned with dark fire where the light struck it, and hung down her back to her waist, framing a striking, square-jawed face. Watching her walk, Garreth remembered the description the bellboy had given of the woman in the Mark Hopkins lobby. She had to be the same woman. Surely there could not be two like this in San Francisco. He would slip something extra to Velvet to thank her for finding this woman.
The hooker had called the office that afternoon. He and Harry were out, but she left a message: If you're still looking for that redhead, try the Barbary Now after 8:00 tonight.
So here he and Harry were, and here was a redhead .
"Nice," Harry said.
Garreth agreed. Very nice. He beckoned to a barmaid. "Rum and Coke for me, a vodka collins for my friend, and what's the name of the singer?"
"Lane Barber."
Garreth did not blame Mossman for having stared at her. Most of the male eyes in the room remained riveted on her throughout the song. Garreth managed to tear his own gaze away long enough to see that.
The barmaid brought their drinks. Garreth pulled a page out of his notebook and wrote on it. "When the set finishes, will you give this to Miss Barber? I'd like to buy her a drink."
"I'll give it to her, but I'd better warn you, she has a long line waiting for the same honor."
"In that case..." Harry took out one of his cards "...give her this instead."
The girl held the card down where the light of the candle on the table fell on it. "Cops! If you're on duty, what are you doing drinking?"
"We're blending with the scenery. Give her the card, please."
Three songs later, the set ended. Lane Barber disappeared through the curtains behind the piano. She reappeared five minutes later in a strapless, slit-skirted dress that wrapped around her and stayed on by the grace of God and two buttons. She made her way through the tables, smiling but shaking her head at various men, until she reached Garreth and Harry.
She held out the card. "Is this official or an attention-getting device?"
"Official, I'm afraid," Harry said.
"In that case, I'll sit down." Garreth felt her legs rub against his under the small table as she pulled up a chair. She smiled at Harry. "Konnichi wa, Inspector Takananda. I've always enjoyed my visits to Japan. It's a beautiful country."
"So I hear. I've never been there."
"That's a pity." She turned toward Garreth. "And you are --- ?"
"Inspector Garreth Mikaelian."
She laughed. "A genuine Irish policeman. How delightful."
Irish through and through, true, despite his name, that she apparently heard as McSomething. Which it had once been --- McAlan --- until his grandfather's apparent sudden move to Sacramento from Chicago in 1929. A fact he discovered accidentally as a boy, but asking his grandmother about turned her grim and earned him a tight-lipped order to never, ever mention it again. Some day he would really like to investigate his grandfather's background.
A thought jerking him back to investigation at hand...where studying Lane as well as possible in the club's dimness, he realized with surprise she was not really a beautiful woman. Her voice and the way she moved, and something radiating from her, almost irresistible in its magnetism, made her seem beautiful. She looked barely twenty.
"Now, what is this unfortunately official visit about?" she asked. "It can't be a traffic ticket; I haven't driven anywhere in weeks."
"Were you working last week?" Harry asked.
She nodded. Oddly, her eyes reflected red in the flame of the candle. Garreth had never seen that in humans before. He watched her, fascinated.
"Do you remember speaking to a man on Monday who was in his thirties, maybe your height when you're barefoot, wearing a red coat with black velvet lapels and collar? He was with four other men, and four young women."
She shook her head. "I must have talked to dozens of people that night. I'm afraid I can't recall any particular one."
"Maybe this will help." Garreth showed her the picture of Mossman.
She tilted it to the light of the candle and studied it gravely. "Now I remember him. We didn't really talk, though. I flirted with him while I sang because he was nice-looking and the one member of the group who didn't have a companion. As he left, he came over to say how much he liked my singing." She paused. "You're from Homicide. Is he a suspect or a victim?"
The lady was cool and fast on the uptake, Garreth reflected. "A victim," he said. "Did he come back here on Tuesday?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. He asked me out, but I didn't go. I don't date married men."
Harry said, "We need to know exactly what he said and did Tuesday. What time did he come in?"
She frowned in thought. "I don't really know. He was here when I did my first set at eight. He stayed all evening and we talked off and on, but not too much. I didn't want to encourage him. Finally I told him I wasn't interested in going out with him. The bartender, Chris, can confirm that we sat there at the end of the bar. About twelve-thirty he left."
Garreth made notes by the light of the candle. "Was that the last you saw of him?"
"Yes. Lots of men don't know how to take no for an answer, but he did."
"I suppose you have a fair number of guys hitting on you. Do you ever take anyone up on the offer?"
She smiled. "Of course, if the man interests me. I don't pretend to be a nun. What business is it of yours?"
"Where do you usually go, your place or his?"
Her eyes flared red in the candlelight, but she replied evenly, "Yes."
Garreth dropped the subject, recognizing evaporating cooperation. There would be time enough later to question her about Adair, if need be. "I'm sorry; that was irrelevant. I'll need your name and address, though, in case we want to talk to you again."
"Of course." She gave him the address, an apartment near Telegraph Hill.
"Are you a permanent resident of the city?" Harry asked.
"I travel a good deal, but this is home base, yes."
"Are you a native like Harry there, or an immigrant like me?"
"Yes," she replied, and when their brows rose, she smiled. "Women are more fascinating with a bit of mystique, don't you think? Leave me mine until you absolutely must have the information, can't you?" She glanced at her watch. "It's almost time for the next set. Please excuse me."
She rose and left, walking gracefully toward the piano. Garreth fought an urge to follow her. If she affected Mossman the same way, no wonder he came back.
Harry grinned at him. "Do you still want to involve her in two murders?"
She began a song in sultry tones that made Garreth's hormones cheer and brought quick speculation about the feel of those long legs wrapped around him. "I'd rather date than arrest her," he admitted. "She seems cooperative enough and she didn't hesitate to admit she'd seen Mossman Tuesday. Still..."
"Still," Harry agreed. "You never know, so we'd better check her out."
5
Lying awake in the darkness of his bedroom, Garreth heard the foghorns start. The years living here had taught him to recognize the patterns of a few, like the double hoot of the one on Mile Rocks and the single every-twenty-seconds blast of the one on Point Diablo. Fog moving in, he thought.
He stopped consciously listening when the horns and diaphone on the Golden Gate Bridge joined the chorus. The dial of his watch glowed on the bedside table, but he resisted the urge to look at it. Why see how long he had lain awake?
He folded his hands behind his head. What was wrong? Why should he be bothered that their interviews with the manager of the Barbary Now and the singer's neighbors last night and today turned up nothing to connect her with the murders?
"I wish everyone I hired were as dependable," the manager said. "She's always on time, always polite to even the biggest asshole customers, never drunk or strung out. Lane never causes trouble."
Her neighbors echoed the sentiment. One said, "You'd hardly know she's there. She sleeps all day and comes home from work after we've gone to bed. If she brings anyone home, I don't know it because she never makes a sound. She's away on tour sometimes and it may be a week before I realize she's gone."
"Do you ever see any of her friends?" Garreth had asked.
"Once in a while. They're men, mostly, leaving in the morning, but all very well dressed...none of the dirty, hairy, hippie types."
Altogether their questions produced a picture of an ideal neighbor and employee. So what did he find so disturbing about that? Maybe just that. People who kept a profile low to the point of invisibility felt suspicious. Even granting differences between professional images and private lives, he could not quite reconcile such a life-style with the sexy, coolly sophisticated young woman from the Barbary Now. The maiden is powerful, I Ching said. One should not marry such a maiden. Beware of that which seems weak and innocent.
Yet, he could not picture her threading a needle into Mossman's jugular, either...not with his present knowledge of her.
"I need to know more," he said aloud into the darkness.
The midchannel Golden Gate diaphone sounded out of the fog in its bellow-and-grunt voice, as though replying to his remark.
He would talk to her landlord, he decided, lying back in bed, and then to more of the Barbary Now personnel. He would see if all their opinions matched the ones he had already heard.
That decided, he lay relaxed, listening to the hooting and bellowing of the foghorns reverberate through the night. The rhythmic chorus lulled him to sleep.
6
The woman inside the protective grille across the doorway wore a bathrobe and slippers. She blinked through the grille at Garreth's identification. "Police? This early?"
"I'm sorry about the hour, Mrs. Armour, but I need to ask a few questions about a tenant of yours." He himself had been up for hours, finding out who owned the house where Lane Barber lived.
Mrs. Armour opened the grille with a frown and led the way up a steep flight of stairs to a sunny kitchen looking out over the fog that shrouded the lower marina and bay. "Which one, and what have they done?"
"I don't know Lane Barber has done anything. She merely knows someone involved in a case I'm investigating."
The frown faded. She sat down at the table, returning to the toast and coffee that Garreth's ring had obviously interrupted. "Coffee, Inspector?" When he accepted with a nod, she poured a cup for him. "I'm glad Miss Barber isn't in trouble. Actually, I would have been surprised if you'd said she was."
Mrs. Armour, too? Garreth added cream and sugar. "You know her well?"
"Not personally, but she's one of my best tenants. I have a number of properties in that area and most of them are rented by restless young people who are here this year and gone the next. I wish you could see the state they leave their apartments in. It's appalling. But Miss Barber pays her rent on time every month and when I have her apartment repainted, as I feel ought to be done every few years, her place is always spotless. She takes beautiful care of it."
Garreth stopped stirring his coffee. "Every few years? How long has she been a tenant?"
Mrs. Armour pursed her lips. "Let's see. I think I've had her apartment done twice. She must have been with me about ten years. No...I've painted three times. She's been there fourteen years. She's my oldest tenant."
Fourteen years? Garreth blinked. "How old was she when she moved in?"
"Very young, but at least twenty-one. I remember she told me she was singing in a club."
Garreth stared at her. The singer was twenty-one fourteen years ago? That face above the candle had not belonged to a woman in her thirties. Although her level of sophistication seemed more commensurate with that age than with twenty-one. Had she had a facelift, perhaps?
"What has her friend done?" Mrs. Armour asked.
For a moment, Garreth struggled to think what the woman was talking about. "Oh...he died. In the time Miss Barber has been your tenant, have you ever had any trouble with her? Has the apartment smelled...strange, or have neighbors complained of strange people coming and going?"
Cult types. It occurred to him that if she lived in the middle of a shifting population, former neighbors may have seen things present ones could not know about.
"Smelled strange? Like marijuana?" Mrs. Armour sat bolt upright in indignation. "Certainly not! I've never had a single word of complaint about her."
Garreth could not believe in this paragon. It was obvious, however, that Mrs. Armour was not going to add any clay to the lady's feet, so he thanked her for her help and headed for the Hall.
As he came into the office, Harry said, "You're supposed to call Narcotics."
Garreth peeled out of his coat. "I hope it's about Chiarelli."
It was about Chiarelli. An Inspector Woodhue said, "It's arranged for you to meet him. Join us in the garage at twelve-thirty."
Garreth hung up. "Let's hope Chiarelli can help us."
"Maybe. But your hexagram this morning said, 'Success in small matters. At the beginning good fortune; at the end, disorder.'"
Garreth grimaced. "Thanks. I really needed to hear that."
He thought about his conversation with the landlady on the Barber girl's age. A strange lady, this redhead. He ran her name through Records. It came back negative for local and state, negative NCIC. She never had even a traffic ticket. In fact, she had no driver's license.
That brought a frown. She said something about not having driven for a while when they talked to her. Had she been only joking?
"Do you think she can be thirty-five years old?" he asked Harry. "She looks much younger."
"Lighting in that bar would make Methuselah look like an adolescent." Harry raised his brows. "Why so concerned about her age? Isn't that part of the mystique?"
"Maybe there's such a thing as too much mystique." The first chance he had, Garreth decided, he would ask the lady a few pointed questions and dispel some of it.
7
A voice over Woodhue's radio said softly, "It's going down now."
Suddenly the old warehouse filled with narcotics officers. Garreth hung on Woodhue's heels, remembering his instructions: This is the drill. We're busting a buy. Chiarelli, who's going by the name Demesta, will be there. You're a hot-dog cop along for the fun. When Chiarelli bolts, you go after him.
The men involved in the buy scattered like cockroaches before a light. Garreth searched among them hurriedly, looking for someone who matched the description Woodhue had given him --- a lean runt in an oversize old army jacket --- but he could not see Chiarelli. In the melee and half dark, he had trouble distinguishing any particular individual.
Then Woodhue pointed and barked, "Get Demesta!"
Garreth saw the army jacket then, faded to pale green, with dark patches where the insignia had been removed. It dwarfed the man inside it, a man who bowled over an officer and was vanishing into the junk littering the building. Garreth took after it.
Chiarelli went out of a broken window in a shower of flying glass from remaining shards in the frame.
Trying to avoid cutting his hands as he followed, Garreth swore. See the stupid cop jump out the window, he thought sardonically. See him break his leg.
Somehow he landed outside without crippling himself and looked up in time to see his quarry scramble across a set of railroad tracks and disappear into a passage between two more warehouses. Garreth pounded after him. At the beginning, good fortune? The hell. It looked more like disorder all day.
A hand reached out of a narrow doorway to grab Garreth's coat and jerk him inside the building. "Let's make this fast, man," Chiarelli said. "You're interested in cults?"
Garreth nodded, panting. "I have two men who've been bled to death through needles stuck in their necks. We think maybe a cult did it."
"Like the Zebra murders? Christ!" Chiarelli shuddered and crossed himself. "So you want the names of people or groups who might use blood in their rituals."
"Right. Can you help me?"
Chiarelli sighed. "I'm not really next to that scene, you know, not unless some group also uses drugs, but...I guess I've heard a few things. Give me paper and a pen."
Garreth handed him his pen and notebook.
Chiarelli printed with the speed of a teletype and talked almost as fast as he wrote, passing on more information than he had time to write. "Some is just addresses, not names. There have been weird stories about this house on Geary. Screaming and smells like burning meat." He had similar comments on every person or address he wrote down. When finished, he handed the notebook back. "Will that help?"
Garreth glanced over the pages, amazingly legible for the speed at which they had been written. "I hope so. Thanks." He started to turn away.
"Wait a minute," Chiarelli said. "We have to make it look good for me or I'm blown."
"I'll just say you outran me."
He shook his head. "Not good enough. You don't look like you've been chasing me all this time."
"How do you want to handle it, then?" He saw Chiarelli's fist double and stepped back, shaking his head. "Hey, not that --- "
But the fist was already in motion. It sank into Garreth's stomach. He went down onto hands and knees in a wheeling galaxy of pain and light. His gut rebelled at the treatment by rejecting what remained of his lunch and he huddled retching on the dusty floor.
A wiry arm slipped under his and helped him to his feet as the paroxysm subsided. Chiarelli's face floated beyond a blue haze, grinning. "Just relax. You'll be all right in a couple of minutes."
Garreth would have gone for Chiarelli's throat, but he could only lean against the wall and concentrate on breathing.
"Sorry, man; it has to look real."
No worry about that, Garreth reflected bitterly.
"See you around, man." Chiarelli slipped out the door.
Garreth continued to lean against the wall for several more minutes, then made his way slowly back to the site of the bust.
Seeing him coming, Harry exclaimed, "Garreth!" and rushed to catch his arm. "What happened? Are you all right?"
Garreth leaned against a handy car, holding his stomach. "Bastard ambushed me. I thought I was never going to make it up off that damned floor."
"So you let him get away, hot dog?" Woodhue said.
Several prisoners snickered. Garreth glared at them. "Next time I won't bother chasing him. I'll hobble the son of a bitch with a piece of lead."
Harry helped him to a car. "Nice acting," he whispered.
Remembering Chiarelli's smirk, Garreth said, "Who the hell is acting?"
He sat silent all the way back downtown. Not until they had left the Narcotics officers and returned to Homicide did he give the notebook to Harry. "We'd better run these names, then find out who owns or lives in these houses."
Harry regarded him with concern. "Are you sure you're all right? Maybe you ought to go home and take it easy the rest of the day."
"I'm fine. We have work to do." He started to take off his coat and winced as the motion stretched bruised muscles.
Harry hustled him toward the door. "Go home. I'll tell Serruto what happened."
"I'm fine," Garreth said.
"No one who refuses time off can possibly be fine. Go home."
Eyeing Harry's frown, Garreth sighed. "Yes, papa-san."
He left Chiarelli's pages of his notebook with Harry and headed for his car. After slipping the key into the ignition, though, he sat without starting the engine. As much as he hurt, he hated the thought of going home. He ought to give up the apartment with all of its sweet and painful memories and find another. Perhaps one of those places around Telegraph Hill that Mrs. Armour owned.
The thought of them told him what he really wanted to do. He wanted to see Lane Barber again, to talk to her by daylight and find answers for the increasing number of questions she raised about herself. Then he started the engine.
8
She did not come to the door until Garreth had rung the bell five times. He realized she must be sleeping and would find his visit inconsiderate and inconvenient, but he remained where he stood, leaning on the bell. She finally opened the door, wrapped in a robe, squinting against the light, and he discovered that even by daylight, she looked nothing like a woman in her thirties. If anything, she seemed younger than ever, a sleepy child with the print of a sheet wrinkle across one pale, scrubbed cheek.
She scowled down at him. "You're that mick detective. What --- " Then, as though her mind woke belatedly, her face smoothed. He watched her annoyance disappear behind a facade of politeness. "How may I help you, Inspector?"
Why did she bother to swallow justifiable irritation? Did police make her that nervous? Perhaps it was to observe this very reaction, to see what she might tolerate to avoid hassles, that he had persisted on the bell.
"I'm sorry to wake you," he lied. "I have a couple of important questions to ask."
She squinted at him from under the sunshade of her hand, then stepped back. "Come in."
Moving with the heaviness of someone fighting a body reluctant to wake up, she led the way to the living room. Dark drapes left the room in artificial night. She switched on one lamp and waved him into its pool of light. She herself, however, sat in a chair beyond it, in shadow. A deliberate maneuver on her part?
"This couldn't wait until I got to the club?" Irritation leaked through the careful modulation of her voice.
"I'll be off duty by that time. I try not to work nights if I can help it; the police budget can't stand too much overtime."
"I see. Well, then, ask away, Inspector."
With her face only a pale blur, Garreth found himself listening closely to her voice, to read her through it...and discovered with surprise that she did not sound like he felt she should. Inexplicably, the voice discorded with the rest of her.
"Can you remember what you and Mossman talked about Tuesday night?"
She paused before answering. "Not really. We flirted and made small talk. I'm afraid I paid little attention to most of it even while we were talking. Surely it isn't important."
"We're hoping that something he said can give us a clue to where he went after leaving the Barbary Now. Did he happen to mention any friends in the city?"
"He was far too busy arguing why we should become friends."
Suddenly Garreth realized why her voice seemed at odds with the rest of her. She did not talk like someone in her twenties. Where was the slang everyone else used? Just listening to her, she sounded more like his mother. What was that she had called him at the door? A mick. Who called Irishmen micks these days?
Garreth looked around, trying to learn more about her from the apartment, but could see little beyond the circle of lamplight. The illumination reached only to a Danish-style couch which matched his chair and a small desk with a letter lying on it.
He said, "Did he tell you he was married?"
"He wore a wedding ring."
"Of course." Garreth stood up and moved toward the door. "Well, it was a slim chance he'd say anything useful, I suppose. I'm sorry to have bothered you." On the way, he detoured by the desk to read the address on the letter. Knowing someone she wrote to might be useful.
"It's a price I pay for my unusual working hours." She stood and crossed to the lamp. "I'm sorry I couldn't help."
Garreth had just time enough to read the ornately written address before the light went out, leaving the room in darkness.
On the steps outside, after her door closed behind him, he reread the address in memory. The letter had to be incoming; it had this address. However, it had been addressed not to Lane Barber, but to Madelaine Bieber. The similarity of the two names struck him. Lane Barber could well be a stage name, "prettied up" from Madelaine Bieber.
He eyed the garage under the house as he came down the steps to the sidewalk. Did she drive or did she not?
He tried the door. Locked. However, by shining a flashlight from his car through the windows, he made out the shape of a car inside and illuminated the license plate. He wrote down the number.
Motion above him brought his attention up in time to see the drape fall back into place in the window over the garage. Lane, of course, watching him, but...out of curiosity or fear? Maybe the license number would provide an answer to that.
Back at the Hall, he ran Madelaine Bieber's name through Records and asked for a registration check on the license number.
"The car is registered to an Alexandra Pfeifer," the clerk told him. The address was Lane's.
"Give me a license check on that name."
The picture from DMV in Sacramento looked exactly like Lane Barber. Miss Pfeifer was described as five ten, 130 pounds, red hair, green eyes, born July 10, 1956. Which would make her twenty-seven.
Then Records came back with a make on Madelaine Bieber. "One prior, an arrest for assault and battery. No conviction. The charges were dropped. Nothing since. She's probably mellowed with age."
Garreth raised a brow. "Mellowed with age?"
"Yeah," the Records clerk said. "The arrest was in 1942."
Garreth had the case file pulled for him. Madelaine Bieber, he read, had been singing in a club in North Beach called the Red Onion. A fight started with a female patron over a man, and when the woman nearly had her ear bitten off, she preferred charges against the singer. Miss Bieber, aka Mala Babra, was described as five ten, 130 pounds, red hair, green eyes, claiming a birth date of July 10, 1916. The mug shot looked exactly like Lane Barber in a forties hairstyle.
Garreth stared at the file. If Lane were born in 1916, she was now sixty-seven years old. No amount of facelifting would ever make her look twenty-one. This Bieber must be a relative, perhaps Lane's mother, which would explain the likeness and similar choice in professions. But why was Lane receiving her mother's mail? Perhaps the mother was a patient in a nursing home and the mail went to her daughter. It was something to check out. Another question remained: Why have a false driver's license and a car registered to that false license name?
Mystique? Lane generated nothing but, it seemed. The lady definitely deserved further attention.
9
At eight o'clock, when Lane came out through the curtains for her first song, Garreth sat at a table talking to a barmaid while he ordered a drink. "How long has she been singing here?"
The barmaid, whose name tag read Samantha, shrugged. "She was here already when I came last year."
"What do you think of her?"
Samantha sighed. "I wish I had her way with men. They fall all over themselves for her."
Lane worked her way through the club as she sang. On one turn, she saw Garreth. For a moment, her step faltered and a musical note wavered, then she smiled at him and moved on.
After the last song of the set, she came over to his table. "We meet again. I thought you weren't going to work overtime tonight."
He smiled. "I'm not. I'm here for pleasure. I'd also like to apologize again for disturbing you this afternoon."
She smiled back. "That isn't necessary; I realize you were only doing your job."
"Then may I buy you a drink?"
"Later, perhaps. Right now I've already promised to join some other gentlemen."
Samantha, passing the table, said, "Don't waste your time; you're not her type."
Garreth watched Lane sit down with three men in flashy evening jackets. "What is her type?"
"Older guys in their thirties and forties. Guys with bread to throw around. And her man of the evening is always a tourist, an out-of-towner. She only likes one-night stands."
Garreth recorded it all in his head. He asked casually, "Man of the evening? She lets herself be picked up often?"
"Almost every night, only she does the picking up. The suckers just think they picked her up."
"Really?" Be an audience. Keep her going, Garreth, my man.
"Really. She chooses one, see, and tells him to leave but that she'll meet him later. She never goes out the door with one of them."
"Then how do you know that's what happens?" He kept his voice teasing.
"Because..." Samantha lowered her voice. "...I've overheard her giving them instructions. She tells the guy that the boss is her boyfriend, see, and that he's very jealous, but then she tells the sucker he's turned her on so much, she's just got to see him. He leaves thinking he's really a superstud. Every night she tells a different guy the same thing."
"Always a different guy? No one ever repeats?"
Samantha shook her head. "Sometimes they try. She's polite, but she never goes with them again." She sighed. "She must do something they really dig. I wonder if I should try the tigress bit, too."
"Tigress bit?" You're doing great, honey; don't stop.
"Yeah. If they come back for another try, the guys she's gone with always have this huge hickey on their necks. I've never --- "
The whole world screamed to a halt for Garreth. He felt electricity lift the hair all over his body.
"Hickey?" he asked breathlessly. "About this size and located here?" He demonstrated with a circle of thumb and finger.
The barmaid nodded.
She's dirty! But for a moment Garreth could not be sure whether he felt satisfaction or disappointment at proof of her involvement. Perhaps both. Wanted or unwanted, this gave him a legitimate excuse to ask all the questions of her he liked.
He gave Samantha a five-dollar bill. "For you, honey. Thanks."
He made his way to the table where Lane sat. Nodding to the three men with her, he said, "Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen, but I need to speak with the lady for a minute."
Lane smiled. "I said, later, perhaps."
"It can't wait."
One of the men frowned. "The lady said later. Bug off."
Ignoring him, Garreth leaned down to Lane's ear. "I can use my badge and make it official."
She glanced up sharply at him. Her eyes flared red in the candlelight again.
Why did her eyes reflect when most people's did not?
Lane stood, smiling at the men, cool and gracious. "He's right; it can't wait. I won't be a minute." As they walked away from the table, though, the tone of her voice became chiding. "So you're on duty after all. You lied, Inspector."
"So did you. You said you didn't see Mossman after he left the club on Tuesday, but we found him with a bruise on his neck just like the ones the girls here tell me you put on all your men."
She glanced around. "May we talk outside?"
They left the club. Outside, the street stretched away from them in both directions, glittering with the lights of signs and car headlights, smelling of exhaust fumes and the warmth of massed humanity. Like accents and grace notes, whiffs of perfume and male cologne reached them, too. Voices and cars blended into a vibrant roar. My city, Garreth thought.
Lane breathed deeply. "I do so love the vitality of this place."
Garreth nodded agreement. "Now, about Mossman..."
"Yes, I saw him." She strolled down the street with him following. "What else could I do? He would have waked all the neighbors, pounding on my door that way. He got the address from the phone book."
"So you invited him in?"
She nodded. "Then...well, he was a charming man so...we ended up in bed. He left about three, alive, I swear. But he insisted on walking, even though I warned him not to and offered to call a cab."
Garreth counted two possible flaws in the story. Three o'clock lay on the edge of the limits given by the ME for Mossman's time of death. He would have had to die very soon after leaving Lane's apartment. And would a man careful enough to leave his keys and extra money and credit cards hidden in his hotel room ignore the offer of a cab and walk down a street alone in the middle of the night?
They turned the corner. Once around it, the traffic thinned and the noise level dropped dramatically.
Garreth asked, "Why didn't you tell me this before?"
She sighed sheepishly. "The usual reason: I didn't want to be involved."
"The autopsy found puncture wounds in the middle of the bruise on Mossman's neck. How did they get there?"
"Punctures?" She stared down at him. "I don't have the slightest idea. They weren't there when he left me."
Garreth said nothing in response to that. Instead, he waited, curious to see what more she might say. But unlike most people, who felt uncomfortable with silence and would say anything, often incriminating things, to fill the void, she did not rise to the bait. She said nothing as they turned another corner.
Now almost no traffic passed. Garreth found himself preternaturally conscious of the near empty street. Here on the back side of the block, they seemed a hundred miles from the crowds and lights.
He asked, "Did you ever meet a man named Cleveland Adair?"
Her stride never faltered. "Who?"
"Cleveland Adair, an Atlanta businessman. We found him dead two years ago with a bruise and punctures just like Mossman's. A woman matching your description was seen in the lobby of his hotel shortly before his estimated time of death."
He expected denial, either vehement or indignant. He was even prepared for her to try running away. Instead, she stopped and turned to look him directly in the eyes. "How many deaths are you investigating?"
Her eyes looked bottomless and glowed like a cat's. Garreth stared into them, fascinated. "Two. After all, it looks like the same person killed them both."
"I suppose it does. Inspector," she said quietly, "please back up into this alley."
Like hell I will, he thought, but found he could not say it aloud. Nor could he act on the thought. Her eyes held his and his will seemed paralyzed. Step by step, as commanded, he moved backward, until he came up short against a wall.
"You're here alone." Her hands came up to his neck, loosening his tie and unbuttoning the collar of his shirt. Her hands felt cool against his skin. "Have you told anyone where you are or about my little love bites?"
Yes, he thought, but he spoke the truth. "No." Should he have admitted that? He could not find concern in him; all he cared about at the moment was staring into the glowing depths of her eyes and listening to her voice.
"Good boy," she crooned, and kissed him gently on the mouth. She had to bend down to do it. "That's a very good boy." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't think you should ever tell."
He barely heard her. Her voice reached him from a great distance, like all sensation at the moment: the rough brick of the wall at his back, the chill of the evening, the increasing rate of her breathing. Somewhere deep inside, uneasiness stirred, but listening to it seemed too much trouble. He found it easier to just stand passive and let her tip his head back against the wall.
Her lips felt cool on his mouth and cheek, and her fingers on his neck as she probed to one side of his windpipe. His pulse throbbed against the pressure.
"That's a nice vein," she whispered in approval. Her breath tickled as she spoke between kisses. "You'll like this. You'll feel no pain. You won't mind a bit that you're dying." She kissed him harder and he felt the nip of her teeth. Her mouth moved down over his jaw to his neck. "You're a bit short for me so this will be awkward unless you stand very still. Whatever happens, don't move."
"No." It emerged in a sigh.
"I love you, Inspector. I love all men of power." Her teeth nipped harder, moving toward the spot where his pulse beat against her fingers. "You don't have money or position like the others, but you have knowledge...knowledge I can't afford to have spread around, so that gives you more power than most of my lovers. Still, I have more. I have the power to take yours. I love doing that. I am become Death."
She bit harder. A distant sensation told him her teeth had broken his skin, but he felt no pain, only a slight pressure as she sucked.
"What --- " he began.
Her finger brushed across his lips, commanding him to silence. He obeyed. All desire to talk had left anyway. A wave of mixed warmth and cold moved outward through his body from where her mouth touched him. He shivered in pleasure and moved just a little, straining toward her mouth. Yes. Nice. Go on. Don't stop.
Presently, though, he wondered if maybe she should. He felt very weak. He needed to sit down before he collapsed. His knees buckled, but her hands caught him under the arms and held him against the wall. She must be very strong, came a languid thought...certainly stronger than she looked, to be holding up someone of his weight so easily. The maiden was powerful, just like I Ching said.
But with that thought lassitude disappeared. Fear rose up through him like a jet of ice water. Two men the singer knew had died of blood loss. Now she kissed his neck in the very spot where the other men had punctures and bruises and he felt himself weakening, too! With a profound shock of horror and revulsion, he realized why. Lane Barber was sucking his blood!
He shuddered and tried to pull loose, pushing at her shoulders with his hands. His body obeyed only sluggishly, however, and when she noticed his effort, her body pressed harder against his, pinning him to the wall.
Use your gun, you dumb flatfoot.
But her hand easily kept him from reaching it.
Abandoning pride in favor of self-preservation, he opened his mouth to yell for help. Her hand clamped across his mouth, silencing him.
Garreth's breath caught in fear. He no longer had the strength to fight her. Only her weight against him held him upright. She was killing him, as she had killed Adair and Mossman --- were human teeth really sharp enough to bite through skin into veins? Where had she learned such depravity? Do something, man! Fight her! Stay alive!
In desperation, he bit at her hand to make her let go of his mouth. He sank his teeth in deep, using all his fading strength. Skin gave way. Her blood filled his mouth, burning like fire. Convulsively, he swallowed, and his throat burned, too...but with the fire came a surge of new strength.
Lane jerked the hand to free it, but he bit harder, making the most of the opportunity to hurt her. More blood scorched down his throat. He managed to bring both hands up to her shoulders and push her back.
But it was too little effort coming too late. She tore loose from him, her hand from his mouth and her mouth from his throat. He felt her teeth rip through his flesh. As she backed away from him, he fell, collapsing to the ground.
The pain of striking the ground barely reached him. He only saw, not felt, the blood streaming from his torn throat to make a crimson pool around his head. A suffocating fog muffled all sensation...touch, sound, and smells.
"Goodbye, lover," a distant, mocking voice said. "Rest in peace."
Her footsteps receded into the darkness. Garreth tried to move, to drag himself to the mouth of the alley where he might find help, but a leaden heaviness weighted him down, leaving him helpless. He could not move, only stare into the growing pool of blood draining from him. He cursed his stupidity...for coming after her alone, for not letting someone know what he had found out, but most of all, as his breathing and heartbeat stumbled, faltered, and faded, he cursed himself for underestimating her...just what I Ching warned against. How could he explain this to Marti when he saw her?
See the idiot cop, he thought bitterly. See him bleeding to death . . . dying alone in a cold and dirty alley.
Passage
1
Rest in peace. Like hell. Death was not peace. It led not to Marti, nor to any kind of heaven . . . not even to oblivion. Death was not that kind. Death was hell.
It was dreams...nightmares of suffocation and pain, of restless discomfort, of aches impossible to ease, of itches impossible to scratch. It was hallucination invading the void, playing blurrily before half-open eyes unable to focus or follow...imaginary hands on him, patting him, then lights, footsteps, sirens, voices.
Oh, God! Call the watch commandeer.
I didn't kill him, Officer! I'd never kill no cop, and anyway how could I do that to him? I just took the gun and stuff out of his pockets. Would I show you where the body was if I'd done it?
Garreth?
Easy, Takananda.
Garreth! Oh, God, no!
He hasn't been dead long; he's still warm.
Are there loose dogs in this area?
Death was hell, and hell was dreams, but mostly, hell was fear...panic-stricken, frantic. Were all the dead aware? Did they remain that way? Was this to be eternity...lying in twilight and nightmares, throat aching with thirst, body crying for a change of position, mind churning endlessly? Did Marti lie like this in her grave, insane with loneliness, begging for peace, for an end? No, not for her...please, no.
He hated giving up life, but accepted that in the jungle, death was the price of carelessness, of error, and he errored badly. Surrendering life to rejoin Marti would be welcome. He could even accept oblivion. This, though...this limbo? The thought of having to endure it for eternity terrified him.
He screamed...for himself, for Marti, for all the dead trapped sleepless and peaceless and tormented in their graves. He screamed, and because went unvoiced, it echoed and reechoed endlessly down the long, dark, lonely corridors of his mind.
The horror escalated. A sheet over him blocked the vision of his eyes; temperature had become all one to him, unfelt; and the lack of breath prevented him from smelling anything, but he knew he lay in the morgue. He had heard its cold echoes on arriving, had felt them park the gurney, and heard the freezer door close. Now he heard, had lain listening for countless time, the hum of refrigeration units while he dreamed nightmares and wished Lane had thrown him in the bay, too. Better to be fish food than lie in this hated purgatory of cold and steel. He prayed for his parents to be spared seeing him here.
That was when he thought of the autopsy. His heart contracted in fear. What would it be like? How would it feel to lie naked in running water on cold steel, sliced open from neck to hips, shelled out like ---
Heart?
His mind held its breath...waiting. Yes, there it was! His heart squeezed again. A slow ripple moved outward from it along his arteries. He felt almost every inch of them. A long pause later, his heart squeezed again, then again...settling into a slow but regular rhythm.
He listened in wonder. If his heart beat, he could not be dead. His body lay leaden, held unmoving on the stainless steel the surface beneath him, but a silent cry of joy banished the darkness inside him. Alive!
He drew a breath...slow, painfully slow, but a breath nonetheless. He swore his breath and heart stopped in that alley. He had felt --- how he had felt! --- the silence of his body. What miracle caused the heart and lungs to resume function? He could not imagine, and at the moment, overjoyed with the sound and feel of them, he did not give a damn why.
But he remained in a morgue freezer, naked under the sheet. Unless he found a way out, the cold would kill him again. Could he attract attention by pounding on the gurney? Calling out?
He tried, but the weakness that held him motionless the past --- how many? --- hours persisted. He still could not move. Could not speak.
Could he survive until they came to take him out for the autopsy? He felt less cold now. Perhaps if he kept alert, he could fight off hypothermia.
He wished, though, that he could change position. His body consisted of one continuous, unrelenting ache, stiff from neck to toes. By concentrating and straining, he finally managed to move. Like the first heartbeat and the first breath, it came with agonizing slowness. Still, by persisting, he managed to shift his weight off his buttocks and turn on his side. Not that it helped a great deal. He still felt uncomfortable, but at least the position of the aches changed.
He tried again to call out but managed only a whisper. He would just have to wait for them to come for him.
He fought his way onto his stomach to change the pressure points once more and felt the sheet slide sideways. Slowly, painfully, he managed to turn on his side again and pull the sheet back over him. Little protection from the cold as it was, it was better than lying bare-assed.
He did not sleep, but in spite of himself, he must have dozed because the sound of approaching feet startled him. He never heard the door open. Light blinded him as the sheet came off.
"What clown put this stiff on his side?" a voice demanded.
If he raised upright, would they faint, Garreth wondered. He wished he could find out, but gravity dragged at him, weighting him. He went without resistance as they rolled him on his back again and rearranged the sheet over him.
"Hurry," another voice said. "This one's a cop and Thurlow wants to get him posted as soon as possible."
Garreth worked his hands to the edges of the gurney and clamped his fingers around the rubber bumper. Even if he could not move fast enough to attract their attention and they missed the faint motion of his chest, they could hardly overlook this.
The gurney halted stopped. An attendant pulled off the sheet. Hands took him by the shoulders and legs and pulled...but Garreth's grip held him on the stretcher.
"What the hell is going on?" snapped the voice of the medical examiner.
"I don't know, Dr. Thurlow. His hands weren't like that when we put him on the gurney."
Now that he had their attention, Garreth forced open his eyes. Half a dozen gasps sounded around him.
He focused on Dr. Edmund Thurlow. "Please." The whisper rasped up his throat with a plea from his soul. "Get me out of here."
2
Why were the doctors out at the intensive care unit desk talking so loud, Garreth wondered. Every patient in the unit could hear them.
"I tell you he was dead," Thurlow said. "I detected no vital signs, no heartbeat or respiration, and his pupils were fixed and dilated."
"It's obvious he couldn't have been dead," a hospital doctor said. "However, that's beside the point now. The question is, can we keep him alive? We're pouring blood and ringers into him as fast as we can but his blood pressure is still almost nonexistent and he's hypothermic and bradycardic. His breathing is so slow only the monitor tells me he's breathing."
Garreth looked up at the suspended plastic bags, one clear, one with contents the same dark red as Lane Barber's hair. His eyes followed the tubing down to his arms. The blood made him feel better, but still not good. Exhaustion dragged at him. He desperately wanted to sleep, but could not find a comfortable position, no matter how he shifted and turned.
"What about the throat injury?" Thurlow said.
"A few skin sutures are all he's needed," came the reply. "The trauma isn't nearly as severe as you described, Dr. Thurlow."
"We have photographs of what I saw." Thurlow sounded defensive. "Both the left jugular and common carotid suffered multiple lacerations, almost to the point of complete severing. There were also multiple lacerations of the trachea and left stemocleidomastoid muscles."
"I've seen your photographs, so I believe you...yet twelve hours later the muscles, vessels, and trachea appear intact."
They went on talking, but Garreth tried to ignore them. Careful not to move the arm with the needle in it, he shifted position again. The cardiac monitor above his bed registered the effort with an extra bleep. Moving proved pointless, however. Nothing made him comfortable. His bed stood near the window, and the glare of sunlight added to his discomfort.
Footsteps approached. If it was the nurse, he decided, he would beg for something to drug him to sleep.
Then he smiled weakly as Harry and Lieutenant Serruto appeared around the curtain across the door.
"Hi." he whispered.
"Mik-san," Harry replied in a husky voice. His hand closed hard over Garreth's.
Serruto said, "They're letting us ask you a few questions."
"Yes. What the hell were you doing up there?" Harry demanded. "I'm your partner. Why don't you tell me what you're doing?"
"Easy, Harry," Serruto said.
Garreth did not mind. He heard the frantic worry beneath the anger and knew how he would have felt in Harry's place. "Sorry."
"What happened?" Serruto asked.
Talking hurt. Garreth tried to find a short answer. Reaching up to the heavy collar of bandages around his throat, he managed to whisper, "Lane Barber bit me."
They stared. "She bit you! That's an understatement. How did it happen?"
How could he explain the loss of will that allowed her to stand him passively against a wall and tear his throat out? Damn, that light hurt. He shut his eyes. "Please. Close the curtains. Sun's too bright."
"There's no sun," Harry said in a tone of surprise. "We've been socked in with heavy fog since midnight."
Garreth opened his eyes again in astonishment. Noises that sounded overly loud and light that hurt his eyes. Bleeding to death produced one hell of a hangover. But to his relief, Harry closed the curtains. It helped a little.
"Lane bit Mossman and Adair," he said with an effort. "Drank their blood."
"Christ!" Harry shuddered. "The barmaid thought Barber might be kinky, but she's really bent."
Barmaid? Garreth did not ask the question, but he raised his brows in query.
Serruto explained. "We went around to the Barbary Now. Harry thought that you might have been there. The barmaid told us what you two talked about."
If that were so, Harry must have made the same connections he had. He looked questioningly at Harry.
Harry sighed, shaking his head, indicating to Garreth that they had not arrested Lane.
"She's skipped," Serruto said. "Caught a plane to be at her mother's bedside, she told the manager."
Harry said, "Something spooked her. When she came to work, she told the manager that she might have to leave suddenly. She'd even arranged for another singer to come in. After her walk with you, she sang a second set, then made a phone call --- to her family, she told the manager --- and said she had to leave."
Garreth's visit that afternoon spooked her. She saw him taking down the license number of the car. "Search her apartment?"
They nodded. "Nothing," Serruto said. "No personal papers in the desk or trash. Some had been burned in the fireplace. The lab is seeing what they can recover from them. Refrigerator and cupboards bare. She left a closet full of clothes. The manager has no idea where her mother might live."
A nurse came in. "Lieutenant, that's enough for now." When Serruto frowned, she slid between him and the bed and herded both the lieutenant and Harry away.
Harry called back, "Lien sends her love. She'll visit as soon as it's allowed."
When they were gone, the nurse moved around the bed, tucking in sheets. "For someone so weak, you're a restless sleeper."
For the first time in his life. "Not comfortable. Sleeping pill?"
"Absolutely not. We can't allow anything that depresses body functions." She leaned across him, pulling up the covers. As she did so, the smell of her filled his nostrils...a pleasant mixture of soap and fabric softener and something with an odd but strangely attractive metallic/salty scent. "How about a back rub. That may help."
It did not. The sheets felt hot and sticky every place they touched him, with razor creases. He twisted in vain looking for a cool spot. However futilely he hunted a comfortable position, however, unit of blood reduced his feeling of weakness. The dragging weight of his body lightened and he moved with less effort. A thirst that had persisted all day turned into hunger and he looked forward eagerly to supper. An eagerness evaporating abruptly when he saw the broth, gelatin, and tea they allowed him.
"I don't get real food?" He thought longingly of fried rice and Lien's sweet-and-sour pork.
"We don't want to strain your circulation by making it work at digestion."
Maybe we did not, but he wished otherwise. Then again, maybe she was right. After eating, his stomach churned uneasily, as though debating whether to keep the offering or not.
Garreth lay quiet, willing the nausea away. Could this be part of last night, or was it an aftermath of Chiarelli's punch?
At length, the nausea subsided...and Garreth discovered he felt much better. Full of new blood and a symbolic meal, he felt surprisingly normal. Though he still needed sleep, he found some of the aches had subsided. He wished he had a TV to watch.
A doctor appeared later in the evening, introducing himself as Dr. Charles. Garreth recognized the voice from the group at the desk earlier. "You're looking much better, Inspector. Your blood pressure is steadily improving. Now, let's check a few other things."
He used a stethoscope and rubber hammer and tongue depressor, listening, peering, tapping, probing. While he worked, he hummed. Occasionally the hum changed key, but Garreth could not tell if that had any significance or not. What he did notice was the same metallic/salty odor about the doctor that he had noticed on the nurse. Did they all wear the same antiperspirant or something?
"You're doing much better. What you need now is a good night's sleep, and if you're doing this well in the morning, we'll move you out of Intensive Care," the doctor said. He discontinued the blood and fluids.
Garreth, however, did not feel the least like sleeping now. He wanted a TV or visitors. Lacking both, he could only lie in bed listening to the heart monitors bleeping in ragged syncopation in the other rooms. He closed his eyes, but opened them again when his mind began replaying the nightmare in the alley. Where had she learned that perversion?
Why did they keep Intensive Care lighted so brightly at night? he also wondered. How could anyone sleep in a glare like this?
He lay awake when dawn came, and then, astonishingly, for what must be the first time in his life, the first rays of the sun brought an intense desire to sleep. Only he could not. Just as suddenly, he rediscovered all yesterday's aches. The sheets heated up and Garreth found himself once more in a ceaseless hunt for a comfortable position. Worse, when breakfast came, his stomach voted against it. It came back up almost before he swallowed.
On his morning rounds, Dr. Charles frowned gravely at that. Garreth told him about Chiarelli.
"We'll schedule for a barium series tomorrow and see about your stomach."
In the meantime, they returned to intravenous feeding. After the morning bloodwork, they decided he needed still more blood. He lay with clear liquid running into one arm and blood into the other. He would look like a junkie by the time he got out of here, he reflected.
The air filled with that metallic/salty scent, stronger than ever. Only this time, with none of the staff around.
Sniffing out the source, Garreth discovered that it came from the tube feeding blood into his arm.
The hair on his neck rose. That was what he was smelling, blood? He smelled the blood in people?
He shivered. Son of a bitch. What was happening to him?
Before he had a chance to answer the questions about himself, Serruto arrived with tape recorder to ask official ones. The statement taken, Garreth was moved to the medical floor and left to sleep. But the huge weight pressing him into the steaming sheets gave him no chance...no peace.
Garreth did not even attempt lunch. The mere scent of it nauseated him.
Lien came for a short visit in the afternoon. "You look terrible," she said, "but at least you're alive. I had a frantic call from your mother yesterday morning."
Garreth's stomach tightened. "They heard about me on the news?"
"No, it hadn't been broadcast yet. She said your grandmother Felt you'd been killed, that Satan tore out your throat." Lien paused. "I'm happy she's only part right this time. Unfortunately, at that time we did think you were dead, so the happiest phone call I've ever made was the one later to let your mother know you're alive after all. She said to tell you they'll be up in a couple of days to visit."
He would like that. Maybe Judith would let them bring Brian, too.
Lien chattered about her job and art classes, relieving him of the necessity of saying anything. While she talked, she distracted him from his discomfort.
Which all came back once she left. He resumed fighting aches and searing sheets. To make matters worse, his upper gums now hurt.
He eyed the cushioned chair by the window. That might be a helpful change; it would be a change anyway. So he threw back the covers and eased over the side of the bed.
In two steps he had fallen flat on his face, giving himself a bloody nose and --- he discovered with horror --- loosening his upper canine teeth. They wiggled when he touched them with his tongue.
He was trying to crawl back into bed when an aide found him.
Dr. Charles wasted no time with sympathy. "That was a stupid thing to do. You're still too weak to get out of bed, and when I decide you're ready --- when I decide --- you will be helped in and out. Under no circumstances are you to do it alone. I presume that as a police officer you know how to take orders. Well, I'm giving you one. Stay in bed. Do nothing without permission first. Is that clear?"
Garreth nodded meekly. "Yes, sir."
"Good. We have the barium study scheduled for you tomorrow. We'll get a dentist to check your teeth as well."
Though he never managed to sleep, he dozed, and toward nightfall not only felt much better, the desire to sleep vanished.
He turned on the TV.
A nurse, coming in to check his vital signs, turned it off. "Dr. Charles wants you to sleep."
As soon as she left, however, he switched the set back on, keeping the volume as low as he could and still hear. That proved to be very low indeed. It seemed that his sharpened hearing persisted. He used it to listen for nurses in the corridor, so he could shut off the set before they came in.
After midnight, Channel 9 started its Friday Fright Night feature, three horror movies in a row. Garreth settled back to watch, as he often had since Marti died. However melodramatic, the movies diverted him. Tonight's offerings began with Dracula.
He sighed. How appropriate. His entire life these days seemed to revolve around blood, or the lack of it.
Into the movie, with everyone worrying about Miss Lucy's mysterious wasting disease, Garreth reflected that his one complaint with these shows was the way the characters waded up to their necks in clues and yet never realized they had a werewolf, demon, or vampire loose among them. On the other hand, perhaps that was reasonable. In real life no one would guess such a thing, either. They would hunt a rational explanation. Like with Miss Lucy. They thought the broach on the shawl caused the punctures on her neck. No real-life person would consider a vampire bite as ---
The thought ended in a paralysis as profound as when he lay in the morgue. He could not move, only stare at the TV screen with mind churning. No, that was impossible...a crazy thought! He was losing his mind. Lane Barber might be psychotic and a killer, but a human one, certainly. Nothing more or less. How could she be anything else? She slept all day because she worked nights. If she kept no food in her apartment, maybe she hated to cook and always ate out. He kept little more than snack food and microwave dinners at home himself. Yes, she bit men she made love to and some of them died, but two men with punctures in their bruises did not mean punctures in every bruise.
On the TV, Dracula's bite turned Miss Lucy to a vampire driven by mindless bloodlust.
Thirst started to burn in Garreth's throat and he reached involuntarily for the bandage around his neck.
No! He jerked his hands away. That really was impossible! If every vampire bite made a vampire, the world would be hip-deep in the creatures. Look at all the men Lane had bitten.
He turned off the TV with a decisive stab of his finger. The blood loss must be affecting his mind. Vampires did not exist. He had no insatiable urge to bite the nurses, did he, despite his thirst and their attractive blood scent? He had not developed a desire to don a black opera cape and take the form of a bat. He just happened to feel better at night.
But cold continued to run up and down his spine, and knots worked uneasily along his gut.
Anger flared in him. This was nonsense! He would end it once and for all.
Easing out of bed, he groped his way to the bathroom and peered into the mirror. To his relief, he saw the same face he did every morning while he shaved.
So that settled that! Everyone knew vampires did not reflect. His teeth, though sore and loose from his fall this afternoon, looked no longer than usual.
Then he realized he had not turned on the light.
He quickly flipped up the switch...and wished he had not. The eyes in the mirror, perceived before as normal gray, now reflected the light as Lane's had, flaring red. Fire red, hell red...blood red.
Garreth slammed down the switch in a spasm of panic and clutched the edge of the washbowl for support, trembling. No! This was insane. Impossible!
And yet...
He sat on the closed lid of the toilet. Yet, how was it that he, who always woke with the sun, now felt better at night? Why could he see in the dark? Why did he smell the blood in people and throw up solid food? On the other hand, if he had become ---
The thought stumbled and died before a new flood of panic. Run! a voice screamed inside him. Run! It brought him off the toilet to the bathroom door, where he clung to the jamb, breathing hard. He had to get out of here. There was a logical explanation for everything but he needed somewhere to think. Somewhere quiet. He could not do it in this reek of blood and voices shouting up and down the halls and everyone coming to poke and prod him.
How to get out, though? While they could not keep him against his will, demanding to be released in the middle of the night might make them consider him irrational. He could hardly walk out in a hospital gown, either.
But he had to get away somehow!
Shaking, he made his way back to the bed and pushed the call button.
"May I help you?" a female voice asked from the speaker above the bed.
"I need to go to the bathroom. Will you send an orderly to help me, please?"
A female aide appeared a few minutes later, not an orderly. She opened the cabinet beside his bed.
"Please, not the urinal," Garreth said. "I feel much better. Can't you let me use the bathroom if someone takes me there?"
"I'll see," she said.
While Garreth waited, crossing mental fingers, he ripped the draw sheet on his bed into several long strips and wrapped them around his waist under his hospital gown. When the door opened again, he smiled in relief at the brawny orderly.
"You're sure you want to try this?" the orderly asked.
Garreth nodded. He had no trouble making the gesture sincere.
"Okay." Putting an arm around Garreth, the orderly helped him out of bed and supported him across the room into the bathroom.
The orderly's cheerfulness stabbed Garreth with guilt. He consoled himself with the thought that if all went right, no one would be hurt.
The orderly left him in the bathroom. Garreth waited a few minutes, running the water, then sat down on the floor and called for help.
The orderly hurried in. "Did you fall? Are you hurt?"
"Help me up, please."
As the orderly leaned over to do so, Garreth threw an arm around the muscular neck and tightened down.
The orderly collapsed flat on the floor in Garreth's neck lock.
"I don't want to hurt you," Garreth said, "but if you don't shuck your shirt and pants in one minute, you're going to have the biggest pain of your life in your neck."
"Mr. Mikaelian, you --- " the orderly began in protest.
"Strip."
It was hard with both of them lying on the floor, but the orderly managed. Garreth tied his hands with the strips from the draw sheet, gagged him with another strip and a washcloth, and tied him to the pipes of the washbowl, out of reach of the call button beside the toilet. Then Garreth changed into the orderly's clothes, rolling up a cuff to shorten the trousers to his length. He helped himself to the orderly's shoes as well, though large for him.
"I'm sorry about this, but I want a quicker discharge than I think the doctor is willing to give me. At least I'm leaving you your skivvies. I'll see the other clothes are sent back."
The orderly sighed in combined disgust, anger, and bewilderment.
Garreth walked out, shutting off the light and closing the bathroom door.
No one looked twice at him in the corridor. He took the elevator down and walked out of the building without being challenged. On the street he hailed a cab. The resolution that let him walk without staggering ran out. He slumped back in the seat.
"Hey, buddy, you okay?" the cabbie asked.
Oh, God. The cabbie smelled of blood, too, though with the reek of sweat and cigar nearly overwhelming it. The combination sent waves of nausea through him. "I'm fine."
The ride home seemed interminable. Keeping the cab waiting, he unlocked the door with his hidden spare key and changed clothes. A sweater with a turtleneck reaching almost to his ears hid the bandage on his throat.
He went to the gun safe for the Charter Undercover revolver he liked carrying off-duty and strapped the .38 to his ankle, then dropped the extra set of car keys, his ATM card, and cash from his desk drawer into the pocket of a sport jacket. He had to endure another ride in the cab to an ATM, then to the lot where he parked the ZX.
It was with relief that he paid off the cabbie, adding a twenty for him and tucking a couple of twenties into the orderly's clothes. "See that these reach an orderly named Pechanec at General will you?"
Then he was free, on his own. He started the car. But he hesitated before backing out of the parking slot. Where did he go now? "On his own" it occurred to him, this time meant alone...very, very alone.
3
Garreth drove blindly, not caring where he went. Some place would feel right, and there he would stop, and think. Rational answers he had overlooked before would become apparent. Then perhaps he could make the terrified child within him realize there was nothing to run from, nothing to be frightened of.
Eventually he found himself in a deserted parking lot, but it was with shock that he looked up and recognized Mount Davidson. The white cross atop the hill loomed above him, his strange new night vision seeing it luminous with icy fire against the night sky. Relief and triumph followed surprise. This proved his imaginings false. How could he possibly have come to a place like this if he had...changed.
Climbing out of the car, he made his way up to the cross. No lightning struck him. No terrible agony engulfed him. If anything, each step made him feel better. Sitting on the ground at the base brought sheer relief, all the aches of the past several days draining away. Garreth stretched out full length and buried his face in the grass. The earth felt delicious, so cool, so clean and sweet-smelling. Funny. He had never liked sleeping on the ground as a kid on scouting camp-outs, but now it felt better than any bed, certainly better than that torture rack at the hospital. What a joy it would be to just to continue lying here, to pull the earth over him and ---
He sat bolt upright, shaking, horror and gut-wrenching fear flooding back. What the hell are you thinking, man! He really was going wacko. He had better take himself back to the hospital before his delusions had him jumping some unsuspecting jogger. But Garreth could not make himself move, even though his presence defiled the hill. The earth drew him. It even soothed the thirst growing more ravenous by the hour.
The sun, he decided. He would wait for the sun. If nothing happened when it rose, there was nothing wrong with him except that he had gone bananas and needed a room at the funny farm. And if --- well, it would be a clean end with no one having to know what a foul, damned thing he had become.
Garreth crossed his legs, folded his hands in his lap, and waited. Eventually the sky lightened. His heart pounded. Feeling it, he scolded himself. Don't be a fool. Nothing's going to happen. But his heart continued to slam against the wall of his chest while the sky grew brighter. Pulses throbbed in his aching, burning throat, in his arms, legs, temples.
The upper rim of the sun appeared over the horizon. Garreth braced himself. A beam of light lanced westward to the great white cross above him. He fought an urge to bury his face in his hands and made himself lift his chin to meet the sun.
It brought no agony, no searing dissolution. The light burned through his eyes, however, turning the throb in his temples to a pounding headache. A great weight pressed down on him, draining his strength, dragging at his limbs. The earth beckoned to him, called him to the sweet coolness that would shut out this miserable, blinding, exhausting sun ---
"No!" He lurched to his feet. "Damn you!" he shouted at the sun. "Kill me! You're supposed to kill me. Please! I won't be...this...what Lane is!" He screamed into the gold and pink sky of dawn. "No! No! NO!"
Screamed in fury and despair, over and over and over.
Garreth did not recall running down Mount Davidson or fishing trooper glasses from the glove compartment of the car and gunning the ZX out of the parking lot, but he found himself driving again, with mirror lenses hiding the eyes of his image in the rearview mirror. Driving where, though? He slowed down, groping for orientation. And slowed still more as a patrol car passed him going the other direction. He carried no driver's license; that sat in the Property Room along with the rest of his billfold contents, state's exhibits.
A street sign finally told him where he was. The Sunset district. His reflexes were taking him to Harry and Lien's place...to Lien, who had kept him sane the last time his life crashed down around him.
Garreth parked the car around the corner at the end of the block Harry did not pass on the way to work and climbed over the fences separating the yards behind the neighborhood houses until he reached the Takananda's. There he sat down behind the big oak tree shading the flag-stoned patio and settled against the trunk to wait.
From inside the house came the sounds of morning: a shrill electronic beeping of the alarm clock, running water, the murmur of voices. The telephone rang. Harry's voice rose. Moments later the front door slammed and the motor of the car roared to life. Tires squealed around the corner at the far end of the block.
Garreth pushed to his feet and came around the tree onto the patio.
Lien saw him from the kitchen. Her almond eyes went wide.
"Garreth!" She ran out of the house to him. "What on earth are you doing?"
He managed a wry smile. "Visiting."
Her eyes flashed. "Don't lie to me, Garreth Doyle Mikaelian! Harry just had a call about you. Come in this minute and sit down! You look ready to fall on your face."
He followed her gladly and dropped into the closest chair.
She sat on the hassock in front of him, frowning in exasperation and concern. Her nearness brought a warm wash of bath-talcum scent overlying that of blood. "Why did you run away from the hospital?"
He could give a half-truthful answer. "I couldn't eat their food or sleep in their bed. I wanted out."
She stared. "Have you lost --- " She broke off to resume in a patient voice, "Garreth, you almost died. You're in no condition to be going anywhere. You need medical care. Come on; I'll drive you back."
She started to rise.
Garreth reached out to catch her wrist. "No! I can't go back. I --- I'm --- " But the words caught in his throat. He could not tell her what a monster he had become. Hell...he could not even say the words to himself. Thank god for the glasses so she could not see the animal glow of his eyes. "Lien, I have to sleep and I haven't been able to since I went into that place. Let me stay here today, and promise you won't tell anyone where I am, not even Harry. Please!"
She stared from his face to her wrist and said softly, "Garreth, you're hurting me."
He let go as though stung. Shit. "Damn! I'm sorry."
Lien rubbed the marks left on her wrist by his fingers. "I never knew you were so strong."
He swore at himself. How could he be so thoughtless? He had seen some of his strength when wrestling the orderly. "I didn't realize --- I never meant --- I'm sorry," he said miserably.
"Garreth!"
He looked at her.
She patted his arm. "You can stay on one condition. That you do nothing but rest. Do you promise?"
He nodded.
She smiled. "Fortunately it's Saturday and I don't have to work, so you won't be alone. Harry went off without breakfast. Would you like his waffles?"
His throat burned with hunger but the thought of waffles brought a spasm of nausea. He grimaced. "I'm not hungry."
Lien frowned at him "Garreth, you --- " She sighed. "All right. Now get yourself into bed in the guest room."
A bed. He would never be able to sleep on a bed. "I'd rather sleep out on the patio."
"Patio!" she said in horror. "It's chilly out there."
"Please. I can't breathe in here."
His desperation reached her. While her forehead furrowed, she made no further protests...even when he passed the lounge chair to lie down on the grass well in the shade of the tree. His last conscious sensation was of Lien covering him with something.
4
He slept, but not in oblivion. Garreth dreamed...frantic, terrifying dreams...of the alley and Lane tearing out his throat, of being Gerald Mossman, split open and shelled out on an autopsy table, of chasing joggers through Golden Gale Park and tearing out their throats to gulp down the salty fire of their blood.
He fled from the murders, running back through the park to the Conservatory. Inside, though, it had become a library. Titles of the books glared from the spines in pulsating red lettering: Dracula, The Rise and Fall of the Roman Vampire, Foundation and Vampire, The Vampire Strikes Back.
Spinning away from the stacks in revulsion, he found himself among a group of children sketching bats and wolves under Lien's direction. He started to back away but Lien caught his arm and, pushing him down in a chair, cradled his head against her chest.
"Hush, Garreth, hush." She rocked slightly, stroking his hair as he remembered her doing once after Marti died. "The superior man doesn't panic. Let's try studying this thing calmly. Look." She released him and began two lists on her sketch pad. "It's obvious that everything legends say about vampires isn't true. Yes, you rest best on earth, you smell and crave blood, and something is happening to your teeth. On the other hand, while daylight is miserably uncomfortable it doesn't kill you. There's no nonsense with mirrors, either. The subject needs more research, but perhaps most of the legend is false. Maybe you don't have to stop being the person you are, the person Harry and I love. Once your basic needs of rest and food are met, why can't you go on living your life as you always have? Lane passed as human."
True, but... "She's still a monster."
"Because she's chosen to be. She didn't have to kill those men. I don't believe anyone or anything is inherently evil."
That sounded like Lien, always seeing the good.
"You can chose what you want to be. Do you understand, Garreth?" Her voice rose, became more insistent. "Garreth?"
That was a real voice, not a dream. He clawed his way to consciousness and opened his eyes. The sun hung low in the west. Lien knelt at his side with an expression of relief.
"You're the soundest sleeper I've ever seen," she said. "I don't think you moved all day. I couldn't even see you breathe. I kept coming out to make sure you were still alive." She paused. "Did you know it's almost impossible to feel your pulse? Your skin is cold, too. Garreth, please, please, let me take you back to the hospital. They're turning the city upside down looking for you."
He flinched at the reproach in her voice and sat up stiffly, groping for the dream. Had the dream Lien been right? Could he go on being the same person? "Thanks for not giving me away."
"You needed the rest." She stood. "Come inside. It's freezing out here."
It did not seem so to him.
"What do you think you can stomach For supper?"
His throat burned. A cramp contracted his stomach. He let it pass before answering. "Maybe just tea."
She turned around sharply. "This is ridiculous. You have to eat! Are you trying to kill yourself?"
Maybe that would be best. Dreams were often just dreams. He did not want to think about eating. "Please, Lien."
She fixed the tea and stood with arms folded, watching him sip it. "At least show up at the Hall to let them know you're alive so they can go back to hunting people who deserve it."
He hated lying to her. He did it anyway. "All right. I'll turn myself in to Harry."
She hissed in exasperation. "Don't be childish. It isn't like that and you know it."
"I'm sorry."
The tea curbed none of his thirst, but at least its warmth soothed his throat and the cramps. He stood and put on his coat.
Lien followed him to the door. "Please take care of yourself."
He hugged her. "I will. Thanks for everything. You're a super lady."
Picking up the car from around the corner, he drove to the public library in the Civic Center.
The subject needed research, his dream Lien had said. Racing to beat closing time, he hurriedly picked out books about the vampire legend, and after skimming them, copied pages to study more closely over multiple cups of tea in a near-by cafe.
That went fine as long as he considered the information just research, as long as he did not think of it applying to him personally. Let that awareness seep in, though, and all the horror, the dread, returned in an icy flood. His hands shook so much he could hold neither cup or papers. It all seemed so preposterous, a nightmare. If only he would wake up. Or consider it just a delusion born of the trauma of Lane's attack.
He humored the delusion and resumed reading, still shaking.
There appeared to be two kinds of vampires, those like Dracula who walked around talking and reasoning, and the zombies like Miss Lucy, mindless, dripping dirt and graveclothes, driven only by their lust for blood. Lucy had been bitten by Dracula, but he, like Mina Harker, had swallowed some of his attacker's blood in turn. Did that make the difference? Why?
A question none of the reading helped answer was why Lane let him live. She had broken Adair's and Mossman's necks to destroy their nervous system and prevent them from rising again. Why had she not done the same for him?
"Inspector Mikaelian?"
He started. A uniformed officer smiled down at him. "We spotted your car out front. Everyone's looking for you."
No! Protest screamed in him. Not yet! He still had so much to figure out.
He contemplated excusing himself for the restroom and escaping out the back. Then rejected the idea. If he could really pass as normal --- as human --- it had to start with acting normal. Not wacko...not guilty. And this officer looked experienced, likely to accompany him to the restroom. No way did he intend to assault a fellow officer, too.
Casually, Garreth folded the copied pages and slipped them into the inside pocket of his sport coat. "Have you called it in?"
"Yes. Lieutenant Serruto is on his way."
Serruto! Garreth's stomach lurched. Could he face his boss and carry off normal? He forced a smile. "Let's go."
They waited in the parking lot along with the second officer from their patrol car. Serruto arrived...with Harry driving. The knot in Garreth's stomach jerked tight in dismay. He had to face Harry, too?
The lieutenant did not bother getting out of the car, just rolled down the window. "Give one of the uniforms your car keys, Mikaelian. Drive the car to the Hall," he told the uniformed officers, "and have the keys taken up to my office in Homicide. Get in, Mikaelian." Neutral as the tone was, Garreth heard steel under it.
He climbed in the back seat. And almost choked. Their blood scent flooded the car. He opened the window the full third it rolled down and sat hard up against the door.
"Thanks," Serruto told the officer, then as the car left the parking lot, he turned around on the seat to face Garreth. "Hunting you monopolized a lot of manpower, Mikaelian. We thought we'd find you collapsed somewhere, really dead this time."
Garreth slunk down in the seat, flushing guiltily. "I'm sorry."
Serruto shook his head. "I don't know how anyone practically dead three days ago manages to overpower a husky orderly but I'm more interested in why you did it. What's going on here?"
What could he say? What would a normal man say? "I --- some kind of panic attack? Once they moved me out of ICU I couldn't eat; I couldn't sleep. I had to get out of there."
Serruto eyed him for several moments...then sighed. "Look...having your throat torn out by a psycho, waking up in the morgue...that's a hell of an experience. Of course you're screwed up. That's why the hospital is where you need to be, so we can sort this out."
Oh, right...discover what Lane turned him into! No. "But I feel better since I left." Inwardly he winced, saying it. God, how lame that sounded.
To Serruto, too. His eyes narrowed.
Harry said, "Come on, Garreth. Lien called me and said you were virtually comatose all day at our house. That doesn't sound like better to me."
"You don't have a choice here," Serruto said.
About which time Garreth realized they were pulling into General's parking lot. Now he did feel a panic attack. Short of overpowering them, how did he avoid being forced inside?
His racing mind spun back to Lane forcing him into the alley. Could he hypnotize with a look, too? Two men? Maybe not that...but Serruto made the decisions. Could he handle this in a way that compelled Serruto and convinced Harry?
He looked Serruto hard in the eyes, trying to remember how Lane stared into him. "I do feel better. If a doctor checks me over and okays me, let...me...take...my...sick...leave...at...home."
Serruto's eyes and expression fixed. His voice flattened. "All right."
Garreth grinned to himself. It worked!
Harry started. "What! Sir..."
Okay...he needed more for Harry. If he shifted from Serruto, though, he might lose control over the lieutenant. He continued focusing on Serruto. "What if I stay at your place, Harry?" He needed the freedom of solitude but...deal with that later. "Lieutenant, if the doctor okays me, can I stay with Harry?"
"All right."
5
Of course the doctor checking his heart, blood pressure, and reflexes okayed him..."persuaded" into recording normal values, as he was persuaded into performing the examination without Harry and Serruto present.
Freed from control, Serruto looked baffled by how he agreed to the arrangement Garreth suggested. Garreth worried about him reneging, but the...suggestion held. To a point. Frowning when the doctor pronounced Garreth "miraculously fit," he said, "I don't believe it. This coming week you're going to have a real medical exam...along with the psych evaluation the department wants."
"Dr. Leonard?" Garreth protested. "I don't --- "
"Do you want your badge back?" Serruto snapped.
"Yes!" Of course he did.
"After this hospital stunt on top of what you've been through, the department's never going to okay you for duty without the shrink's okay. Understand?"
Something else to deal. Later. For now, no longer threatened with hospital confinement, he nodded meekly. "Yes, sir."
"After we let you pick up clothes and stuff at your place, go home with Takananda and rest."
So he did...more or less. Not in the guest room where he stayed until Harry and Lien went to bed, but out under their tree...reminded of the times he camped as a Boy Scout. Except now he luxuriated in the cool comfort of the ground instead of wanting an air mattress between him and it. While he rested, he considered solutions for the sleeping situation. A coffin was ridiculous, but he did need some kind of container for a layer of earth. Any kind of earth, it appeared, not that native soil nonsense.
He sat up, thinking again of the Boy Scouts. An air mattress might work. As soon as possible, he would leave here and try it out.
In the morning he played with the eggs and toast Lien fixed for him, managing to look like he ate without actually doing so. He also palmed the vitamins she forced on him and drank only tea.
"Since Harry is on duty today," she said, "will you come to church with me?"
His stomach knotted. Church! Could he go? He shuddered at the possibility of making Lien witness him being struck down...maybe going up in flame? Then again, nothing happened at the foot of the Mount Davidson cross, and he needed to explore the limits of his existence. "Okay, sure."
Reaching Our Lady of Grace, however, crushed by daylight and taut with apprehension, he followed Lien in gingerly, feeling he violated the place. If he were wrong about churches...
But nothing punitive happened as they entered the sanctuary. Still, he forced himself not to cringe when Lien touched him with Holy Water...and sucked in a breath of relief when that brought no Divine retribution, either. Sitting in a pew with her, he even felt a kind of peace. Even with blood scents washing around him from all sides. While St. Paul's in Davis was Episcopalian, Our Lady had the same light coming through the stained-glass windows, the same rhythm of standing, sitting, kneeling. It took him back to sitting sandwiched with Shane between his mother and Grandma Doyle, where they could be thumped on the head with a grandmotherly knuckle if they wiggled too much.
If Our Lady's tall priest had looked more like Father Michaels --- a round, jovial man who smelled pleasantly of pipe tobacco and endlessly relit that pipe at the coffee period following Morning Prayer --- Garreth thought he might have been tempted to confess his vampirism and ask for absolution. Or was that cure for his condition myth?
Leaving afterward, Lien said, "Shall we eat lunch out somewhere?"
His teeth rubbed against the inside of his upper lip, so loose they felt ready to fall out. No doubt they soon would, and be replaced by new, sharp canines. Need to be alone overwhelmed him.
"Another time, please? I think I'd like to go home and sleep." If she argued, he was ready to persuade her...as much of a jerk as it made him feel to contemplate doing that to her, of all people.
After for one concerned glance across the top of the car, not long enough to trap her gaze, she slid in under the wheel without looking at him. "Home to our place, I hope you meant. You know the agreement with your lieutenant."
Nor did she look directly at him at the house. Did some mystic Chinese sense warn her of the danger? Might she even suspect the kind of change in him? Was that why she touched him with the Holy Water? The questions left him in turmoil.
More pressing, though, was the problem of escaping his imprisonment without anyone's knowledge. At least temporarily. Only one way he knew. It was not going to hurt her, he argued, and he really had get out.
He followed her into the kitchen. "Lien."
She turned to look at him. Finally.
He trapped her gaze. "I'm going upstairs to lie down. If Harry calls or comes home, tell him you've checked on me and I'm sleeping. You won't notice me leaving or coming back." He paused. "Where am I?"
"You're sleeping."
Okay...now what. Much as he wanted transportation, he decided against taking her car...not and risk having it gone if Harry came home. He called a cab, arranging to meet it at the corner. Rather than stand conspicuously in the open, he waited outside the front door, gritting his teeth against daylight's weight and fear of being caught.
When the cab finally appeared an eternity later, he had it take him to a home and garden store long enough to buy an air mattress in their pool supply section, some vinyl tape, and a bag of potting soil. Which seemed as effective as the earth under the Takananda's tree since touching the bag sucked away a fraction of daylight's misery and brought an urge to stretch out right there on the pile of bags.
Back at the house he looked for Harry's car before having the cab drop him off. No sign of it. He seemed to be in the clear. Inside, Lien sat in the family room reading, never looking up as he peered around the door before slipping into the kitchen to borrow scissors and paper towels.
Upstairs, he cut a slit in the end of each tub in the air mattress --- not trusting the potting soil to pass from tube to tube as air did during inflation --- and using a paper towel as a funnel, trickled in the potting soil until each tube had a layer. After pressing out any air that leaked in with the potting soil, he taped the cuts closed.
Time to see if this worked.
Garreth spread his makeshift pallet on the bed and lay down. Here and there the soil lumped. His body ignored them. Nerves untwisted. Tension and pain drained away, bringing relief so profound he was falling asleep almost before he realized it. At the edge, he forced himself back...struggled upright and slid the pallet under the bed's bottom sheet to hide it.
Last, before letting go, he worried the loose teeth free. Pushing his tongue into the spaces left, he felt sharp points coming through and shivered. The teeth signaled a point of no return. Now he could no longer deny the thing he had become. The chill of that thought followed him into sleep.
6
Hunger woke him, violent, racking cramps doubling him up in bed. His throat burned with a thirst that refused denial. Icy dread replaced the mere chill he felt falling asleep. The time had come to face the problem he had refused to think about before: food.
Tonight he had to...eat.
Garreth staggered down the hall to the bathroom and doubled over the washbowl gulping down water. Neither hot nor cold water slaked the thirst, just eased the cramps enough to let him stand upright.
In the mirror his face loomed pale, unshaven, and gaunt. No longer square, he noticed. Cheekbones showed where none had before. He grimaced. After the times he tried to shed a few pounds...
Thought of weight vanished as he stared at his reflected teeth. Drawing back his lips in the grimace revealed fully grown canines...narrower than his previous ones and grooved at the back, his exploring tongue found. As he opened his mouth for a closer look, they extended a half inch or better. As he relaxed, they retracted again. He thought of Marti and gave thanks she had at least been saved from seeing him like this!
The length of his stubble astonished him. How long had he slept, he wondered as he turned on his razor.
Shaving made him feel better...and look better, he decided. Almost human. Which thought made him eye the bandages on his neck. He unwound them. Beneath, only scars remained...silvery pale. Count the recuperative powers of the vampire as fact, then.
But a human could not heal that fast, so after using a pair of nail scissors from his shaving kit to cut and remove the sutures, he carefully replaced the bandages.
The cramps started again.
Garreth slugged down more hot water until he could stand and walk...then put on clean clothes and made his way downstairs.
Voices drew him to the kitchen and a familiar scene. Harry and Lien seated at the peninsula, Harry with coat and tie off, eating a supper kept warm by Lien. But more than the aroma of sweet-and-sour pork drifted into the hall and Garreth halted, recoiling. Blood. If he went in there he would be surrounded by the smell of it. How could he hope to act normal, when he ached with hunger?
He shook himself. Come on, Mikaelian...man up! You're not a blood-sucking zombie like Miss Lucy. Lane obviously had self-control, despite the club being awash in blood scents. He needed to develop it, too, if he wanted to pass as human.
Garreth forced himself forward...through the doorway.
Lien looked around and smiled. "It lives!"
Harry also turned...for some reason appearing relieved.
"I told you." She patted his shoulder. "Harry here kept wanting to call an ambulance because he'd look in on you and think you'd stopped breathing. I told him not to worry, that you were the same way the other day, that you'd wake up and be fine. Now here you are. And starved I expect."
Panic exploded in Garreth. She knew! She had figured him out! Run!
"There's still plenty of sweet-and-sour and rice left."
The words needed a moment to reach him through the thunder of blood in his ears. When they sank in he swore silently...in relief and chagrin. What was that Biblical quote: The wicked flee where no man pursuith.
He took a breath to calm himself...regretted it when their scents filled his nose and burned down his throat. "I'll take tea; otherwise I'm okay for now. I'm still sore from Chiarelli's punch and trying to go easy on my stomach." He glanced at the kitchen clock. Nine. It had been a shorter sleep than he thought. "I guess you didn't notice I made myself a sandwich this afternoon about an hour after we got back from church."
"Yesterday," Harry said.
Garreth blinked. "What?"
Lien glanced around from filling the tea kettle. "We went to church yesterday. This is Monday."
He slept thirty hours? "Yeah, I can see that might worry you. I guess it was good for me." He gave them a lying smile. "I feel almost normal again." God...the smell of their blood! Hunger screamed in him. He sat on the stool at the end of the peninsula to keep from doubling with a cramp.
Get a grip, Mikaelian!
"Speaking of normal..." Harry reached over to his coat and dug keys out of a pocket. "...here are your car keys back. Also, your med exam is set for Friday morning. Then you see the shrink after lunch. So eat up and rest up."
Med and psych exams in daylight! How much power could he exert then? And how could he even think about strategy while fighting hunger?
So think about something else, man.
One distraction occurred to him. Never mind that it violated Lien's no shop talk rule. "Harry, how are the cases going? Have you caught Wink O'Hare yet...or found any sign of Lane Barber?"
Harry glanced at Lien, who nodded. "Neither one yet. For Barber we've got APB's out for the Barber name and Alexandra Pfeifer." He paused. "Odd alias, isn't it? I suppose it sounds more authentic than the standard Anglo-Saxon ones. But it's all crazy. We dusted her apartment and the only prints we found belonged to your name on the letter, Madelaine Bieber, and she turns out not to be Barber, but a sixty-seven-year-old woman who was arrested for assault in 1941. We can't find her, either."
Garreth bit his lip to keep from telling them that Lane and Madelaine Bieber were the same woman. Once he accepted Lane as a vampire, it followed that her apparent age bore no relation to her actual one. No wonder Lane hunted so efficiently; she had decades of practice. "Did the lab recover anything from papers burned in the fireplace?"
Harry shook his head. "Not much...just a partial postmark on an envelope with two of the ZIP numbers, a six and a seven."
"That doesn't help?"
Harry grimaced. "It might if we knew for sure where they are in the ZIP. If the ZIP is sixty-seven something, the letter came from the middle of Kansas. If it's something sixty-seven something, it could have been mailed in any one of nine states. I had the fun of going through a ZIP directory to check the possibilities." He laughed. "Isn't being a detective exciting?"
"Anything else useful left of the postmark?"
Harry dug his notebook out of his suit coat thrown across the stool next to him...thumbed through, and handed it to Garreth. "I copied it, thinking maybe I'd look at it and have a brilliant insight, or my artist wife would."
The drawing showed a postmark circle with the two visible numbers at the bottom. At the top of the circle, partials of three letters also remained. A dotted line indicated the edge of the fragment. Below the postmark Harry had drawn an elaborate M.
He pointed at it. "That was written, not printed, so it had to be part of the address on the envelope."
The address on the envelope Garreth saw in Lane's apartment started with an M...Madelaine Bieber. So Lane burned the letter before leaving...or at least the envelope. What did she consider dangerous for them to find? Too bad the return address and so much of the postmark were destroyed. Addressed to her real name, it must have come from someone who knew her well and from a long time back.
"Did you learn anything useful from her driver's license or car registration?"
"Just that the information given for the license was false." Harry frowned. "We ran her through NCIC, and asked for Wants on anyone fitting her description. She was in the wind so slick she's got to have done this before. She's wanted somewhere for something." He sighed. "Anyway, that's where we are now."
Garreth wished desperately for a way to slip away, too. The simplest solution that did not involve just running, or trying to hypnotize both Harry and Lien, was wait for them to go to bed. Except that meant trying to ignore blood scents and hunger for several hours yet. Cue the distractions.
He tapped the postmark. "Maybe we can get more out of this. Let's see if we can figure out what these letters are."
They bent over it. That close, their scents overwhelmed him. He forced his focus to just the sketch.
Harry sighed. "Even if we decide what they are, we don't know where in the city name they are."
"No," Lien said, "this first letter is the first letter of the name. As long as you copied everything exactly, there's enough space to its left to show there's no letter there. And the letter has to be a B or D...curved bottom line with a straight edge on the left."
The next letter ended in two slanted feet. An A or X.
"Unless I didn't get it exact and it's an H," Harry said.
"I don't think many town names start BH or DH," Lien said.
Garreth said, "Not BX or DX, either."
She nodded. "So I think Harry copied correctly and it's an A...DA or BA."
The curve of the last letter, they decided, made it a C, O, or U.
"Or maybe a G," Lien said, "because a little is cut off the right side. It might even be a Q, depending on the font."
Frustrating, because any of these letters worked with the first two.
Harry closed the notebook with a sigh and shoved it back in his coat. "Well, it was worth a try, but it didn't get us anywhere."
Not until they knew more about Lane. In the meantime, the exercise used part of the evening and distracted Lien from the fact he had still not eaten anything. Garreth committed what they had of the ZIP and city name to memory...for when it could be useful.
The rest of the evening crawled by in an agony of gritting teeth against the hunger. Garreth drank enough tea to float a freighter. Lien started pressing him to eat something. Finally he gave in, but insisted on serving himself. Out in the kitchen he took a helping of rice and the pork and heated it in the microwave so she and Harry would smell it from the family room. The aroma also helped mask blood scents for a while.
He tried salving the hunger by imagining himself eating the rice and pork, remembering the sauce's sweet tang, the crisp coating on the pork nuggets...even as he carefully buried everything at the bottom of the trash.
The hunger refused to be tricked.
Finally he began faking yawns. "Thirty hours sleep or not, I'm ready to hit the rack again."
He retreated to his room, where he stood at the open window sucking in air free of any blood scent. While waiting for Harry and Lien to come up, too, he removed the bandage from his neck. Just in case of...trouble. As unobservant as witnesses tended to be, they did remember things like bandages. When he listened at their bedroom door and finally, finally, heard the even breathing of sleepers, he sneaked downstairs and out the patio door.
Vaulting the fences to the end of the block and heading for the nearest bus stop, Garreth found he could still not think about what he intended to do...or how to do it. Or where. He let his body take him, guided by its new instincts. With little surprise, though, after several transfers he found himself in North Beach amid streaming humanity.
Of course...Lane's turf, rich with game. The rigid isolation he imposed on himself on the bus shattered, flooding him with the sounds and smells around him. Smells of perfume, aftershave, deodorant, sweat...but above all the rich, salty hot scent of blood. It ignited a renewed frenzy of hunger.
He stumbled down the street, eyeing everyone...the hunger urging him to pick someone, the rest of him heartsick, hating that urge. How could he bring himself to attack another human being as Lane did? What if he refused? Would starvation kill a vampire?
Occasionally a woman passed whose scent seemed especially strong and he turned toward her like a compass to north...only to pull back, afraid. How long had it been since he last picked up a girl? Before he met Marti. He had been turned down a fair number of times in those days, he recalled. A refusal now meant more than a blow to the ego; it meant no supper. Worse, what if she came with him? What if he killed her?
He could not do it. He just...could...not...do...it!
In panic, he turned up a side street and ran away from the crowd, away from the blood smells fanning his hunger, and did not stop until the next corner. There he leaned against the wall of a building, swearing at himself. Some vampire he made. What was he going to do?
Gradually, he became aware of voices around the corner, sharp, full of anger and fear. A man's: "Richie says you're holding out on him. He don't like that."
"I'm not," a woman replied. "I do the best I can. I swear."
Garreth recognized Velvet's voice. Edging up to the corner, he peered around it. The hooker stood backed against the building by a man waving a switchblade under her nose.
"Well you better do better, baby, because Richie says you're running in the red. You ain't cost-effective. So unless you get your act together, you will be running red. I'll fix your face so you can't get a job ushering at a dogfight."
Good old Richie, Garreth thought.
He rounded the corner. Two long strides put him on top of the muscleman, clamping a hand on the wrist of the knife hand just as the man registered Garreth's presence and started to turn. Garreth bent the wrist back. The forearm gave with a sickening crack. He let go of the wrist and smoothly took the knife as the muscleman collapsed screaming to the sidewalk.
Garreth stepped over him and put a hand under Velvet's elbow. "Come on; let's get out of here." He hurried her away.
Her eyes looked the size of dinner plates. "Why'd you do that? He wasn't going to cut me this time. Now Richie will get mad."
"Tell Richie the muscle was getting carried away and about to use the knife for fun when a friendly flatfoot came along. Better yet, drop a dime on him and we'll nail him to the wall before he does have you carved up."
She bit her lip. "Sometime, maybe. For now, thanks." She glanced sideways at him. "Say, what's the story on you? First I hear they found you stiff in an alley with your throat torn out, but here you are walking around breaking arms with one hand. You look younger somehow, too."
He restrained a grimace. Drink blood, the Elixir of Youth. "I owe it all to clean living and a pure heart," he said aloud.
The blood ran hot in her. He smelled it: fear-driven, richly salty, and with it, the near audible hammering of her heart, just now beginning to slow after the terror. He drew a deep breath and, folding the switchblade, dropped it in his pocket. His hand shook with the driving urgency of his hunger.
He felt her looking at him and saw her smile knowingly. She had noticed his increase in breathing and misinterpreted it, he realized .
"Hey, baby. Maybe you'd like to party?"
He shook his head. "Don't make me run you in for soliciting a cop, Velvet."
"Did I mention money? This is on the house. Call it saying thanks. Come on." She reached up to ruffle his hair. "Let me show you blondes really do have more fun. Not just a head job in an alley, either."
He started to say no, but something else in him, something controlled by the ravenous thirst, made it to his tongue first. "Okay."
She tucked her arm through his. "It isn't far. You'll like this."
The same thing Lane said to him that night. An inward shudder at the memory almost made him walk away.
He should have. Hunger aroused him even more than if he felt desire, and its effect impressed even Velvet...but the sex brought no release with the blood smell of her filling his head, burning his throat, making his teeth ache. Until hunger took all control from him and forced him to her neck...kissing it, exploring, fangs extending. Under him, she sighed in pleasure as his tongue found the throb beneath her skin.
The sound goaded him. He bit down, and...
Nothing! Only a drop of blood rose to tantalize him where each fang pierced. He had missed the vein! A scream of frustration echoed through his head, then screamed at him to just go at her, to rip and tear until he found the blood.
Garreth recoiled, scrambling away from her in revulsion at that image. Do to her throat what Lane did to his...no! The guilt he felt coming with her paled beside the self-loathing flooding him now. So he thought he could still be the person he was before? Like hell. Look at him, a ravening monster!
Velvet stirred drowsily on the bed. "Don't rush off, baby. I actually enjoyed that and you look ready to go again."
He struggled into his clothes, desperate to leave before the monster consumed what humanity remained in him. "I'm sorry; I have to work." He buckled his belt.
She sat up, frowning irritably. "Well, wham-bam-thank-you ma' am."
He grabbed his coat, not daring to look at her. "I'm sorry," he repeated. "Thanks. It was good for me, too." Which came out like the lame afterthought it was.
"Cops." She snorted. "Always in a hurry to come and a hurry to go."
He fled. In the street he pulled on the coat while walking away as fast as he could and gulping night air to clear her scent from his head. He kept walking, paying no particular attention to the direction, as long as it led away from the crowds and bright lights.
Missed! He could not believe it. Who ever heard of such a thing? See the vampire miss the vein. See him miss supper. Poor hungry vampire. Maybe he should hire a dowser to find veins for him.
How many necks did a neo-vampire have to mutilate before learning the quick, clean bite? The thought of learning curve carnage horrified him. There must be a way to avoid that and still eat.
A car's horn blared. Garreth realized he had halted in the middle of the street. He dashed on across. Then he noticed his surroundings. He stood on the bay side walkway of the Embarcadero. A man passed him, jogging, a sleek Doberman loping at his side. They trailed scents of sweat and blood.
Garreth's throat tingled. He turned to watch the dog. They had blood, too. Could he live on animal blood? Lane drank human blood and legend said that was the vampire diet...but blood was blood, surely.
The idea of preying on dogs did not really appeal to him...pets, loved by someone. Cats, too. Besides, he had no idea how much blood they could lose without dying. However --- he turned to eye the piers along the Embarcadero --- the city did have one species existing in profusion, that would not be missed, and that he did not mind killing. The idea of touching a rat, let alone biting one, revolted him, but people had eaten them, and worse, to survive. Better to feed on rats than people.
He jogged south, checking each pier, assessing their hunting potential. He wanted rats but no humans, no one to observe him. After passing under the Bay Bridge, he found a pier that looked promising...a dark interior reassuring him of human absence, light passing traffic reducing the number of potential witnesses seeing him go in. Just one problem...a heavy chain mesh gate pulled down across the entrance. Iron gates blocked access to the dock along each side, too. Garreth pressed against the mesh gate, fingers wrapped around some of the chain. Legend attributed great strength to vampires so he might be able to break through. Hunger pushed him to try. But...leave evidence of an intruder? No. If this worked, he needed to be able to come back again. He needed an undetectable way in.
Wrench!
Something seemed to tear Garreth all directions at once. Pain sent him crashing to his hands and knees. He huddled, gasping. What the hell just happened? Why? Mind churning, he groped for the gate, to pull himself to his feet.
Only his hand found no chain. He looked up to discover the gate had disappeared from in front of him. Because, he realized, looking around, it had moved behind him. He knelt on the ground inside the building.
He stared at the gate. So...vampires really could move through closed doors and windows? If they did not mind...what?...feeling like some brutal Klingon transporter ripped apart their atoms? And though the pain was fading, did leaving here mean enduring it again?
The hunger interrupted that unpleasant thought, snarling: HUNT! Climbing to his feet, he started down the length of the building, through a dark turned to mere twilight by his vision, his ears tuned for every possible sound. The building creaked around him. Outside, traffic mumbled and water slapped pilings. Then, amid other sounds, he caught the scrabble of tiny clawed feet and the squeak of a rodent voice. One turn of his head pinpointed the sound. He moved that direction, climbing over crates in his path.
The rat's form appeared among the shadows between more crates ahead. It must have heard him, too, because it grew suddenly still. Only its head moved, turning to look up at him. The tiny eyes met his.
Garreth froze in place, too. At least ten feet lay between them. Could vampire speed --- if that were real, too --- cover it before the rat escaped? It had not moved, still staring him in the eyes. What if, he wondered, he had hypnotic power over animals, too.
Holding its gaze, he slid a foot forward. The rat remained motionless. Step by step, he crossed the space between them. The rat never twitched. Within reach of it, Garreth squatted on his heels. The smell of the rat reached him, a musky rodent odor, strong but not as strong as the tantalizing scent of its blood. He steeled himself to touch the creature. Blood is blood. He drew a breath, smelling that blood...and reached for his prey.
The rat's fur felt spiky in his hand. He waited for it to struggle, but the creature hung quiescent in his grasp. One wrench would break its neck, or a bend of his elbow bring it to his mouth, but he hesitated. Rats carried disease. How did pathogens affect the undead? They must drink diseased blood once in a while. Was it like buzzards, who he remembered someone telling him could eat infected flesh without sickening? Oh, yeah...it had been Marti's girlfriend Janice the walking encyclopedia, the time she and her husband drove to Las Vegas with Marti and him and they spotted the birds eating roadkill along the highway.
Maddened by the rat's blood smell, the hunger grabbed for control. Bite! Tear! Drink! Garreth fought back. All right...but do it his way, not the hunger's. He remembered the switchblade in his pocket. That would keep him from having to actually bite the rat. Then what?
The rat remained quiet. Draining the blood into the palm of his hand and licking it up from there sounded not only slow but primitive. There must be a more...civilized solution.
Garreth stood, looking around for inspiration. His gaze fell on a trash barrel. He carried the rat to it and peered in. Almost on top of the litter sat a coffee carry-out foam cup, lipstick on one side of the rim.
After this he would know to bring a cup of his own, maybe one of those collapsing things for camping, that fit inconspicuously in a pocket. For now, necessity ruled. He set the cup on a crate then, using both hands, broke the rat's neck and brought out the switchblade.
The blade sprang open. He cut the rat's throat and held it over the cup by its hind legs. The stream of blood set his throat and stomach burning in anticipation, even while his brain still recoiled. Blood is blood, he reminded himself. Blood he needed. And when the rat stopped dripping, he resolutely picked up the cup, lipstick away from him, and gulped down the contents before he had time to think further.
With the first taste, all revulsion vanished in a savage appetite for more. At the same time, the blood tasted flat, lacking, as though he drank watery tomato juice when he expected the peppery fire of a Bloody Mary. His skin crawled. All blood was not created equal, then, and what the hunger demanded was human blood.
Suck it up. This is all you're getting.
He drained the cup to the last drop and went hunting another rat.
7
"Mik-san!" Harry came up out of his desk chair. "What did the doctor say?"
"You can have back your guest room."
Around Homicide, other detectives converged on Garreth.
"Is that our Lazarus behind those Foster Grants?" Evelyn Kolb said.
Faye and Centrello pounded him on the back. "You're looking damn good for a dead man."
From the doorway of his office, Serruto said, "Better than the last time I saw you, anyway."
The benefit of drinking heartily.
The lieutenant beckoned Garreth into his office and closed the door. "So. How did your physical go?"
"Better than I expected." Needing, to his astonishment, minimal persuasion...once they passed the dangerous "say ahhh" where his fangs wanted to extend. Even in miserable daylight the blood pressure and heart rate Dr. Charles fussed about before somehow made it into the "normal" range, albeit just barely. He aced the reflex and treadmill stress tests. The rats had not given their lives and blood in vain. Garreth handed Serruto the evaluation form. "I'm cleared for duty."
In anticipation of which he had stopped by his apartment last night for the tie tack replica of his seven-pointed star badge. Wearing a turtleneck instead of shirt and tie, he used it as a lapel pin.
Serruto frowned from the form to Garreth. "This soon? That's hard to believe. You still look pale to me, and gaunt."
Garreth shrugged. "I am losing weight, and the doc wants me losing even more."
Serruto fingered the form. "Your neck is healed?"
Garreth pulled down his turtleneck to show just scars...deceptively livid in color, thanks to being touched up with blusher. "My family are fast healers, and I've been giving it every chance...doing nothing since Saturday but sleeping and eating, and drinking an herbal tea my Grandma Doyle swears by."
Well, he slept plenty by day --- except Tuesday afternoon when he dragged himself to the Drivers License Bureau to replace his drivers license and pick up his car at the Hall. Nights he spent decimating the rat population on the Embarcadero, feeding the little drained corpses to the bay.
Not a way he liked living, though. Last night he came close to being caught by a watchman...making him crouch behind crates with breath held until the man walked out of sight. He needed a way to hunt less often and lower his risk of discovery.
Serruto frowned at the evaluation. "I don't know what the man's thinking. But the shrink still has to weigh in. Two o'clock, right? Don't miss it."
"I won't." Not a lie. He wanted to work...to hunt down Lane. "Do you mind if I hang out here until time to see Leonard?"
Finally Serruto smiled. "Go ahead."
He went to his desk, sitting back-to-back with Harry's. Unlike the medical exam, the shrink worried him. Was passing a simple matter of hypnotizing the man and telling him: You conclude that I am psychologically stable and fit to return to duty. Or did he have to contend with tests which, like the ECG, created a material record? How did he influence those?
Harry looked across from ending a phone call. "Relax, Mik-san. Leonard isn't going to eat you."
His nerves showed? He sighed. "Maybe he will."
He expected Harry to tell him he would do fine. Instead, Harry said, "If he doesn't okay you for duty right away, it isn't the end of the world. Go visit your folks. Visit your son."
Garreth frowned. "You think I won't pass?"
Harry hesitated a moment, toying with the phone he still held in one hand, a finger of his other hand on the switch hook. "Let's face it; you've been strung tight since the attack. You pick at your food, even things you've always loved. You hardly talk. It's like you're looking over your shoulder. Some rape victims have this fear the rapist will come back after them. Is that what's going on, you're feeling Barber's going to come back and finish the job on you?"
Garreth stared at him. Looking over his shoulder...yeah...good guess. Just not for Lane, though it had been like rape...forcing herself on him, stealing a kind of innocence, tearing his life apart as savagely as his throat, but with no hope of healing.
Harry released the switch hook and dialed a number. At her desk on across the room, Evelyn Kolb pulled her thermos from the knee hole of her desk and pumped herself a mug of tea.
Garreth eyed the thermos. What size was that...a quart maybe? Filling a bigger version of something like that with blood would take care of him for...three, four, five days? Except he needed to keep the blood from clotting. He picked up his own phone and dialed the Crime Lab.
"I've got a question. If a suspect wants to keep blood from clotting so we'll think it's fresher than it really is, what could he use? Heparin?" He remembered Marti mentioning that.
The blood specialist they passed him to said, "Probably not. Sodium citrate is cheaper and available at almost any chemical supply house. Plus it isn't a drug, so it's not controlled."
"How much would he have to use?"
"Let's see." Garreth heard pages turning and mumbled calculations, then finally: "It looks like a cc of a two and a half per cent solution preserves two hundred and fifty milliliters of blood. That answer your question?"
"Yes. Thanks." Garreth hoped so.
As he hung up, so did Harry, eyes gleaming. "We've got a lead in your case. I've tracked down Barber's agent."
Barber's agent? Garreth stood when Harry did.
Harry frowned. "What are you doing?"
"Coming with you."
"Whoa!" Harry shook his head. "Even if you were back on duty, you can't have anything to do with this case, not when you're the victim."
Yes, yes...but he needed to hear what the agent said! Who knew what clue it might give him, knowing what he did about Lane, but slip by Harry. He stared Harry in the eyes, quashing guilt at treating him this way. "I'm just riding along. Let me ride along."
After a momentary blank expression, Harry said, "Well, all right. As long as you're just riding along. I ask all the questions."
Garreth nodded. "Absolutely. I'm just a shadow."
8
Harry asked the questions. Not that the answers gave them much information. In the office in her home in the Mission District, Bella Carver --- sleek, dressed in a power suit --- told them, "I have no idea where Miss Barber is. She phoned a week ago Tuesday afternoon and told me not to book her any gigs for an indefinite period."
So it was his visit that spooked her, Garreth reflected. She put the escape wheels in motion right afterward.
"She said her mother is critically ill and she intends to stay with her until the crisis is over."
"You don't know where her mother lives?" Harry asked.
"No."
Harry frowned. "You mean you don't have any personal information on your clients?"
The agent frowned back. "Lane has a veritable encyclopedia of personal information, a bio for every occasion. All probably imaginary. Look, Inspector, I find her gigs and she pays me ten percent. That was our agreement. She gives me no trouble by performing drunk or strung out, or not showing up at all, and she brings me a steady income, so I don't pry into her life." Carver paused. "Once or twice I asked her personal questions and she changed the subject. She looks like a hot, foxy kid, but she's ice and steel underneath."
No kidding, Garreth thought.
As they left, Harry shook his head. "I could have learned that much on the phone. Where do you want to eat lunch?"
The never ending problem of dodging meals. Garreth grimaced. "I'm on a diet, remember? We can eat anywhere you want, as long as I can buy a cup of tea there."
Harry's brows rose. "You're serious about the weight this time."
"Of course." As though he had a choice.
"Well we're in the Mission. I vote for Italian." He smirked at Garreth. "You can have salad."
Garreth sighed. "Fine."
Not fine at all. The moment they walked in the door of the restaurant and he smelled garlic, his lungs froze. Panic flooded him as he tried to breathe and could not.
"Garreth! What's wrong?" Harry shook him by the shoulders.
Garreth struggled desperately to suck in air, but he might as well have been trying to inhale concrete. He would suffocate in here! Half dragging Harry, half carried by him, Garreth bolted for the street.
Outside, the air turned from concrete to cold molasses. Garreth staggered up the sidewalk until the last foul taint of garlic disappeared. Only then did the air return to normal consistency. He leaned against a building, head thrown back, gulping air greedily.
"Garreth, what happened?" Harry demanded.
He had no idea what to say. Would mention of garlic start fatal thought trains? "I don't know but I'm all right now." As long as he avoided garlic. Put one more piece of the legend in the truth column. "It was nothing."
"Nothing! That wasn't nothing, partner. Let's get you to --- "
From the direction of their car, a radio sputtered. "Inspector 55."
Harry hurried back to the car to roger the call. Garreth followed with unsteady knees.
"Public service 555-6116," Dispatch said.
Harry's brows rose. "Sound familiar?"
Garreth shook his head.
They drove to the nearest phone booth and Harry dialed the number. Garreth could not hear Harry's end of the conversation, only see his lips moving through the glass wall of the booth, but as he talked, Harry became more animated. He ran back to the car at a run and jumped behind the wheel.
"Hey, Mik-san, are we still interested in Wink O'Hare?"
Garreth sat up straight. "Are you kidding? Did someone find him?"
"Rosella Hambright's sister just dropped a dime on him. Seems he got peeved at his girlfriend and worked her over. The sister wants Wink's hide for it. But she says we have to hurry. He's getting ready to leave town."
"Then let's hurry," Garreth said.
Harry started to pull away from the curb, then stopped. "Wait. You can't go."
What! No! "Come on, Harry. The sister said he's getting ready to run. We don't want to lose him!"
Harry shook his head. "Letting you ride along to interview the agent was one thing, and I don't know why I let you talk me into that, but going on an arrest...totally different. Especially after that anxiety attack or whatever it was. You could get hurt. Besides, you don't even have a gun."
Garreth bent down and pulled the Undercover from its ankle holster. "Always be prepared." He pulled off his dark glasses. "Look at me, Harry."
Harry looked.
Garreth stared him in the eyes. "I'm coming with you. We worked this case together. We're going to arrest the bastard together."
They radioed in the details and collected two Northern District patrol units for backup on the way. When they arrived, Harry surreptitiously checked the house before they moved in...a decaying two-story building with poverty ground like dirt into its facade. Wink was supposed to be in the second-floor apartment. On his return, Harry reported that narrow, bare stairs led up from a front hall. Two windows overlooked the street. With only a few feet between it and the neighbors on each side, it had no side windows. In back, old wooden stairs in two flights rose to a narrow back porch with one window into the apartment and a window in the upper half of the rear door.
The wages of sin is the hell of hiding in stinking holes, Garreth reflected.
Harry deployed everyone, a uniform behind a patrol car out front, covering the front windows, another around the corner of a building covering the rear window. A third uniform would go in the front with Harry, and the fourth, up the back with Garreth.
"You're sure you're all right?" Harry asked.
"I'm fine. Let's go."
"We'll give him a chance to come out. If he doesn't, you break in the back door. I'll go through the front at the same time. Back door and hall door are at right angles to each other, so we shouldn't be in each other's cross fire, but for God's sake be careful about that."
Garreth and his uniformed partner, a barrel-chested veteran named Rhoades, squeezed between buildings to the back and eased up the stairs, checking each tread for betraying creaks. Keeping low, they crossed the porch, then flattened themselves against the building on each side of the door. The jamb looked half-rotted, easy for kicking in.
With his ear pressed against the side of the house, Garreth heard Harry knock at the front door and call, "Wink O'Hare, this is the police."
Nothing stirred in the apartment.
"Open the door, Wink."
A board creaked inside and stealthy footsteps approached their door. Garreth met Rhoades' eyes and by sign language indicated he would kick in the door then enter high. Rhoades would dive in low. The uniformed officer nodded his readiness.
"O'Hare, open up!"
The footsteps inside moved closer.
"Garreth! Get him!" Harry yelled.
Garreth raised a leg and smashed his heel into the door just above the knob. The door slammed inward. With it a wave of pain like fire burned up his leg and through his body. He staggered sideways. At the same time a shot sounded explosively inside the kitchen and a bullet thudded into the roof of the porch.
Rhoades swore. Garreth tried to shoot back at Wink, pointing his gun around the edge of the jamb and tilting his head just enough to expose one eye for aiming. But fire exploded at him again, paralyzing his finger on the trigger.
"Shoot!" Rhoades yelled.
Garreth could not. Fire seared him. What the hell was this?
The question raced through his head between one heartbeat and the next. An answer followed... but he could not accept it. The prohibition against entering a dwelling uninvited was illogical. It had to be just a legend! He had no trouble at Harry's place the morning he took refuge there. It made even less sense for a bullet from his gun to be blocked, too. Besides, this was a hideout, not a real dwelling...a hideout!
Wink disappeared from the kitchen into the rest of the apartment and two more shots sounded, this time followed by a man's agonized yell. Garreth could not tell whether the shots came from Wink's .45 or Harry's Beretta.
"Harry! Harry!"
"Don't just stand there!" Rhoades yelled.
The uniformed officer hurled himself through the door, shouldering Garreth aside. As a third shot sounded, he disappeared through the doorway on the far side of the kitchen.
With pain wrapping him in flame, Garreth pressed at the opening, willing himself through it. The hot reek of blood filled the apartment. "Harry, are you all right?"
"Get in here, Mikaelian," Rhoades's voice snapped.
The pain vanished instantly. Garreth stumbled forward, cold with fear.
Fear justified. Harry sprawled in the middle of the living room gasping while the uniform who had come up the front with him tried to staunch the blood welling from Harry's chest. Garreth saw Wink, too, shoulder bleeding and screaming as Rhoades roughly cuffed his hands behind his back. Garreth dropped on his knees beside Harry, pulling out his handkerchief to use as a compress on the wound.
A hand caught his collar and dragged him back. "What the hell were you doing out there?" Rhoades demanded. "If you'd fired when you had the chance, this wouldn't have happened. You froze, didn't you? This turkey shot at you and you lost your nerve!"
"I --- " How could he explain.
Rhoades thrust his portable radio at Garreth. "See if you can make yourself use this and call for an ambulance. If we get him to a hospital fast enough, maybe we can still save your partner's life."
Stinging from the lash of the sarcasm, Garreth keyed the mike.
9
The ambulance took a lifetime to arrive, and every minute of the wait, Garreth sat on the floor holding Harry's head in his lap, silently willing him to live. Hang on, Harry! Dear God, don't let him die! As though he, unholy creature, had a right to appeal to a power of Good for anything.
Wink's complaints that he was bleeding to death, Rhoades's mutter as he read Wink his rights, the anger of the four uniformed officers directed at the one who failed them...all existed somewhere beyond Garreth, not touching him. Only Harry felt real, Harry and fury at himself. He should have systematically checked out every legendary condition of vampire existence. Of course he had no trouble at Harry's place. Before he came anywhere near a door, Lien had ordered him to get himself inside and sit down. See the vampire, fucking cretin, trying to act human. In the jungle, death is the price of error, only this time Harry was paying the price for it. Hang on, Harry. Don't let me destroy you.
He forced his way into the ambulance when it came and rode to the hospital with Harry, planted himself against the wall of the ER --- smelling blood everywhere and sickened by it --- until the medical mob raced Harry up to surgery. In the surgery waiting room filling with cops, all keeping their distance from him, he tried calling Lien but reached only their answering machine. A uniformed officer radioed in the license number of her car. Praying some officer found her before she heard the news on the radio or TV, he sat and stared at the doors through which Harry had disappeared.
"Mikaelian!"
Serruto's voice, hard as steel. Garreth could not look at him. He kept his gaze riveted on the surgery doors.
Serruto grabbed his arm...hauled him up and out down the hall to a corner by the elevators. "What the hell happened?"
What could he say. He stared at his feet. "It's my fault. I froze."
Serruto glared. "Froze, hell. What the fuck were you doing there in the first place! Being a fucking cowboy? Why the fuck don't you follow orders!"
Garreth did not remember Serruto ever using that much profanity before. He burned as fiercely as he had at Wink's door.
"I can't believe Harry was fool enough to take you along."
Anger snapped Garreth's head up at that. "Harry's in there maybe dying and you're accusing him of --- I told you, it's my fault. I talked him into letting me come." Forced Harry to take him. Because he was a fucking cowboy and used his damn vampire power for what he wanted without knowing what the hell he was doing and without ever considering the consequences!
Serruto's eyes narrowed. "Of course you feel guilty, and damn well should, but Harry --- "
"You don't know shit how I feel." He heard the despair in his voice, a despair sharpened by the realization of how true that was. Serruto could not know. No one normal, no one human, no one who was as he used to be could ever know how he felt.
And it was staring across that now-perceived abyss between himself and everyone he knew that Lien came running white-faced out of an elevator.
She stopped in front of him. "How bad is it?"
A constriction in Garreth's throat made speech impossible. He could only shrug.
Serruto answered her. "We don't know.
"How did it happen?"
"I'm sorry." Garreth forced the words out. "It's all my fault."
He expected anger. He deserved it. Instead, her forehead creased in concern and she reached for his hand.
Before she could speak an officer appeared from the direction of the waiting room. "A doctor came out for a minute. Harry's still alive." A withering glance flicked over Garreth. "The bullet missed his heart. They're working on stopping the bleeding and patching the holes."
Pain twisted in Garreth. If Harry lived, it would not be thanks to Garreth Doyle Mikaelian. And if Harry lived this time, what about the next? Because if he came back on duty, there would be a next time...another dwelling, another impenetrable barrier or some other vampire barrier he had yet to discover. He might as well accept a hard fact: the...creature he had become could not be a good cop.
He had no badge to turn in. Instead Garreth pulled the tie pin from his lapel and held it out to Serruto. "I shouldn't have this." The words stabbed like a knife in his gut.
Serruto frowned. "Mikaelian --- "
The lieutenant did not take the pin. Garreth let go of it anyway, before he lost his courage to give it up. It fell to the floor at Serruto's feet.
Lien, Serruto, and the officer stared startled at him. The tie tack seemed to stare, too...a tiny seven-pointed star, the half of his soul remaining after Marti, glinting on the floor.
"Mikaelian..."
"Oh, Garreth!"
Their voices reached out for him, like nets or webs, seeking to snare him. An elevator opened. He spun and bolted into it, pushing past a man in an electric wheelchair coming out...stabbed the Down button. The wheelchair blocked the way long enough for the doors to close.
Tears blinded him. What did he do now? Or should he do anything? He wanted to die. He hated this life. He hated the way it hurt people he loved.
He walked blindly away from the hospital, considering how he might kill himself. Shooting himself in the head or jumping off the Golden Gate bridge would do the job except they were clearly suicide methods. It needed to look like an accident, to spare his family and friends...not likely to be easy with what he had become. If only Lane killed him that night. Damn you, why didn't you!
He stopped short in the middle of a street. Brakes screamed and horns blared unheard around him. Because Lane had made him what he was, Harry got shot. So indirectly, she was responsible for that.
An angry voice swore at him. Garreth finally heard and moved on to the sidewalk.
She had destroyed his life, maybe killed his partner, taken away his job, and removed him from his friends. She had destroyed more lives than his, too, when he counted the families of Adair and Mossman. He had no way of knowing how many others she killed in her lifetime. The tally must be high. All those lives over all those years, and she still went free, to kill and destroy again, laughing at law, sidestepping justice. Growing up with a cop father, working as a cop himself, Garreth believed in law and justice as the foundation of civilization. Without them, nothing remained but barbarism and chaos.
He took a deep breath. He knew now what he could do...the same job he had been doing before. Before he found some way to end this unwanted unlife, he would hunt down the red-haired vampire. It takes one to catch one might be truer for this case than any. He would hunt her and he would make her accountable for what she had done to Adair and Mossman and to Harry and him. If it took him to the end of the earth and time, he would find her.
Hunter
1
Lit by the single light above the sink across the kitchen, the liquid in the cut-glass tumbler had the rich, dark red of Burgundy. Garreth, at the table, turned the tumbler in his hands, wondering sardonically what Marti's Aunt Elizabeth would think of the end to which her crystal wedding gift had come. The sodium citrate suggested by the Crime Lab tech as an anticoagulant worked. In the refrigerator four half-gallon plastic milk bottles --- carried empty to the pier in a backpack --- sat filled with still-liquid blood, enough to last him at least a week. A lot of drained rat bodies fed the fishes tonight but the slaughter was worth it.
He sipped the blood almost idly, playing with it as a wine taster might. This Rattus '83 is a bold vintage, speaking to the palate with lively authority, while ---
Garreth cut off the thought, ending the game. He played not for amusement, he knew, but to delay, to avoid considering the problem he had set himself. Just as he had avoided it yesterday afternoon and most of today by focusing on obtaining the sodium citrate. Now he faced it: how could he hope to find Lane Barber on his own when the combined facilities of the department were failing to? Had his melodramatic resignation been premature?
No, he had no choice. He endangered fellow officers' lives. Even if he managed to pass a psych evaluation and be allowed to carry a badge again. Besides, as a "free agent" he could spend all his time chasing Lane, and since he knew what she was he might think of leads not considered by humans. Perhaps he could learn how she thought, too.
He emptied the glass, rinsed it clean, and started pacing the apartment.
First question: Where could she go?
Unfortunately, probably anywhere. In forty-odd years of singing, she must have made many connections. She could no doubt travel to any large city in the country, or perhaps even around the world, and through those connections find a new job. She could change her identity, something she must have honed to a fine art.
One thing in his favor: habit. The famous modus operandi. She drew her food supply from customers where she worked...small, intimate clubs which offered ample opportunity for meeting customers. The Barbary Now and several other clubs the agent named where Lane had worked were all that type. How many such bars and clubs existed within the United States? Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
Garreth sighed. Finding her in North Beach had been simple compared with the task that faced him now. Her bite gave him all the time in the world for hunting her but his bank account did not. He needed to find her before his money ran out. And he knew too little about her to narrow down her possible avenues of escape.
The blinking light on his answering machine caught his eye. Anger flared in him. Someone had been in the apartment today and plugged in the phone he unplugged on coming home from the hospital. Police, he felt sure...admitted by the landlord for a "welfare check" since he left untouched the notes they put on his door yesterday afternoon and evening. The department was looking for him, of course...not out of concern this time but to talk about the shooting. Something he could not endure right now.
As he had yesterday, Garreth unplugged the phone and deleted the messages without playing them back. Even if one concerned Harry. He could not bear to hear if Harry died, nor deserve to know if he lived.
Turning his back on the phone, he resumed considering what he had about Lane. Names, for one. She called herself Barber now, but the name on that envelope had been Bieber, and that on the car registration and driver's license, Pfeifer. They sounded German. Did she choose those names from familiarity with them? Could she have come from an area populated by people of German descent?
As if an answer to that helped. There had to be hundreds of Germanic settlements across the country. Tomorrow --- well, Monday, he needed to find someone who could tell him where large Germanic groups had settled. Maybe one with a 67-something or something-67-something ZIP code.
Or perhaps he could learn all he needed the one place she might shed her facade...home. He still had a couple of hours to daylight, time to search her apartment. Except...could he get in? It was a dwelling and his invitation in came before she killed him. Now...
Every fiber of him recoiled at the thought of facing that fire again. Better to take no chances and get someone to invite him in.
He made himself lie down on his pallet and rest...but not let daylight pull him into sleep. At eight o'clock he looked up the number of Lane's landlady and called her. "Mrs. Armour, this is Inspector Mikaelian. We met at your home last week."
"And you're just as much an early bird today." She paused. "Some people sleep in on Sunday."
In the mild tone of reprimand he heard what he had not before, a touch of southern belle. So...give her a touch of gentleman in return. "I know that, ma'am, and I'm so sorry to disturb you..." Though picking up on the second ring revealed she had been awake. "...but this is a murder inquiry and we really need to look at her apartment again. Can you meet me there with the key?"
"I already gave a key to an Inspector Takananda," she said in a puzzled voice.
"Yes, ma'am, but my partner is out on another case and left the key locked in his desk. It's an big imposition, I know, but this is important."
Her sigh came over the wire. "All right."
He took the bus, leaving his conspicuous car at home. Experimentally approaching Lane's door confirmed his fears about entering. Fire licked out at him before he even touched it. He backed off to wait for the landlady.
Mrs. Amour drove up minutes later dressed for church. Rolling down her window, she held out the key. "Will you return this as soon as possible? It's the only other one I have to the apartment."
Not helpful. Leaning down to the window, he pulled off his glasses, and, despite the searing memory of what this did to Harry, stared her in the eyes. "Please walk through with me."
"All right." She climbed out of the car.
He put back on his glasses. "I can see you're going to church so I really appreciate this. It's so helpful to have someone along who's familiar with the apartment."
She looked simultaneously flattered and impatient. "Will it take long?"
"It shouldn't." Once he was in, she could leave any time.
After unlocking the door, she pushed it open.
He kept back. "After you, ma'am."
She walked in and began switching on lights. When he still hung back, she frowned over her shoulder. "Well, come on in. I don't have all day."
The pain vanished. Garreth quickly followed her into the livingroom. "Tell me if you think anything is missing. What she's taken might give us some idea where she's gone."
Mrs. Armour turned around in the middle of the room. "She has lovely things, doesn't she? She collected them from all over the world."
Spent good money, too, Garreth judged. Though no art expert, he recognized quality in the paintings and some small pieces of sculpture. Toys resting on the bookshelves between sections of books drew more of his attention, however...several old-looking dolls, a miniature tea set, a cast-iron toy stove. Items from her childhood? He studied a type tray hung on the wall, its sections turned into shelves holding an assortment of small objects that reminded him of the "treasures" he had collected in an old tin tackle box as a boy.
She had no broken pocketknife, but there was a top --- wooden, not plastic --- and some marbles --- more beautiful than any he had, he noted with envy --- a big molar from a horse or cow, a tiny rodent skull, and various stones: colored, quartz-like, or containing shell and leaf fossils. He could not identify one group of objects, though. He took down the largest to study.
Held by its flat base, its large central point and two flanking smaller ones reached jaggedly upward, like the silhouette of a mountain range. A mountain dark and glassy as obsidian. Except for size, each object in the group looked identical.
"Shark teeth," Mrs. Armour said.
He blinked at her. "What?"
"Miss Barber told me those are shark teeth."
Black? His tackle box had never held anything that exotic.
Garreth put back the tooth and turned his attention to the books. Nonfiction outnumbered the fiction, but of the several hundred volumes covering a wide range of subjects, including extraterrestrial visitors and medical texts on viruses, only music, dancing, and folklore were represented by any substantial number of books.
He glanced through the folklore. All the books contained sections on vampires.
The publication dates as a whole went as far back as 1919. A couple of children's books --- printed with large color plates tipped in and black-and-white drawings, not the large print and easy vocabulary of the books he bought to give Brian --- bore inscriptions in the front: To Mada, Christmas 1920, Mama and Papa, and To Mada, Happy Birthday, 1921, Mama and Papa. The ornate penmanship looked familiar.
He went on to check for inscriptions in other books. Those that had them were clearly used books, inscribed with men's names or pet names that would never apply to Lane and a pencilled or inked price in an upper corner inside the cover. It appeared no one except her parents gave her books.
He searched the desk. Not that he expected Harry or the lab boys to have overlooked anything useful but he wanted to make sure. He found nothing except blank writing paper and some ball-point pens...no checkbooks, canceled checks, credit card records, or copies of tax returns.
Moving on to the kitchen, he found it as bare as Harry and Serruto had described, nor did the bedroom yield information aside from the fact that she bought her clothes all over the world and with discrimination. He pursed his lips thinking of the price tags that accompanied those labels. She had expensive taste. How did she afford them on a club singer's salary? Did she blackmail some of her "dates"?
"Can you tell me what clothes might be missing?" he asked.
Mrs. Armour frowned. "Now, how should I --- well," she amended as he raised a brow, "I guess I did peek in once. I think there used to be a blue Dior suit and some English wool skirts and slacks hanging at the end there." She described those and some other items in detail.
The dresser had been cleaned out. So had the bedside table and the bathroom medicine cabinet.
"Can you think of anything usually in the apartment that you haven't seen here today?" he asked.
From the bathroom doorway, Mrs. Armour considered the question. "I don't know. I haven't been here all that often, you know."
"Keep looking around, will you, please?"
He understood Lane destroying papers but had trouble accepting she just walked away from all her personal belongings, an accumulation she had obviously kept since childhood. She must have a few items too loved or revealing to be left behind.
He headed back for the living room. It had more of her effects than any other room. It also had the desk.
He stared at it, pulled by some magnetism he could not explain. A letter had been on that desk the first time he saw it. If only he had time to see more than the address before Lane turned out the light. He tried visualizing the envelope in his mind, picturing the ornate lettering.
He paused. That was where he had seen the writing on the flyleafs of the children's books. It had been a letter from Lane's mother! He ticked his tongue against his teeth in excitement.
"I remember something," Mrs. Armour said. "There used to be two photographs on that top shelf."
Photographs. He turned his full attention on her. "Do you remember what they were?"
"One was of her grandparents. She never said so, but I assumed it. It was sepia toned, and the woman's hair and dress were World War I styles. I have a wedding picture of my parents that looks a lot like it. The other looked old, too...three little girls sitting on the running board of a car."
An outdoor picture? "Do you remember the background behind the car"
"Background?" She blinked. "Why, just a house, I think."
"What kind of house? Brick? Stone? Wood frame? Large or small?"
"White I think, with a porch with that gingerbread in the corners between the ceiling and the posts."
"Was there any landscape visible?"
She stared at him. "Really, Inspector, I never paid that much attention. Is it important?"
He made himself shrug. "Probably not." A lie. The little girls could include Lane as a child. A close look at the background might help identify where she came from...and where she came from might point him toward people who knew her well enough to suggest where Lane was now.
Garreth walked out with her, as though finished, but once she drove away he steeled himself and pressed against the door.
Wrench!
A passage as painful as ever, no matter how much experience he had accumulated passing through pier gates. Aggravated by the pressure of daylight.
He staggered into the livingroom and sat down at the desk. Was every aspect of vampire existence paid for in pain? Pain of hunger, pain of daylight, pain at dwelling doors, pain of passage, pain he caused others by bending them to his will. Did Lane experience it, too? He hoped something hurt her.
The pain ebbed and he stood to examine the room again. Books, toys, treasures. He fingered the large shark's tooth again. Everything interesting but not very informative. He wished he could have seen those photographs.
Then again, her situation was like being under cover. One false word might betray her true age, or her true nature. Take him, looking over his shoulder, as Harry put it. Caution must become a reflex.
Not always, he suddenly realized. When booked for that assault in 1941 she gave her name as Madelaine Bieber, the same one on that envelope in her apartment. So it could be her righteous name. The assault itself suggested a woman with more temper and less caution than the one he met. Perhaps she talked about herself back then. He needed to find people who knew and remembered her.
The victim of that assault had good incentive to remember her.
He wished he had the file to study again, or at least his notebook, where he had written down some of the file details. He closed his eyes, trying to visualize the file. Oh yeah...the victim had been one Claudia Darling.
He smiled. So maybe he did not need the file after all. The name and the assault date might be enough to let him pursue other avenues to the information he needed.
2
"I need the July 1942 edition of the Chronicle," he told the librarian on duty in the microfilm section of the Main Library. He wished he remembered the exact date of that assault. It meant searching the entire month of newspapers.
He spun the film through the viewer as fast as he could and still read it. By concentrating so hard on small items, though, he almost missed what he wanted. Lane had earned herself space and a picture on the third page. There was no mistaking her, tall as the four police officers hauling her back from a woman who crouched with blood leaking through the fingers of the hand held over her left ear. "The Barbary Coast Still Lives," the headline proclaimed.
Garreth thanked Lady Luck for the colorful reporting of the day. Maybe he had something here. This Madelaine with her face contorted in fury was a far cry indeed from the Lane Barber who stood him up against a wall years later and coolly proceeded to drink his lifeblood, then go back to work.
He pressed the button for a hard copy of the page and carried it into the reading room to study, underlining all names and addresses. He smiled as he read, amused at both the gossipy style of the story, laden with adjectives, and what he saw between the lines, knowing Lane to be what she was.
A woman named Claudia Darling, described as "a pert, petite, blue-eyed brunette," was accosted in the Red Onion on the evening of Friday, October 17, by "a Junoesque" red-haired singer named Mala Babra. Lane could fill a phone book with her aliases. An argument ensued over a naval officer both had met the evening before, Miss Babra claiming that Miss Darling caused the serviceman to break a date made previously with her.
Oh how that must have frustrated Lane...supper all picked out and some other lady walked off with it.
When Miss Darling denied the allegation, the story went on, Miss Babra attacked. They had to be separated by police hastily summoned to the scene. Four officers were needed to subdue and hold Miss Babra. Miss Darling suffered severe bite wounds to one ear and scratches on the face, but "the familiar habitue of the nightclub scene is reported to be in satisfactory condition at County General Hospital."
Garreth eyed the last sentence, ticking his tongue against his teeth. He sensed a sly innuendo, something readers of the time no doubt understood, but which eluded him, two generations removed. He studied the photograph: the four officers straining to hold Lane, obviously surprised by her strength; Lane ablaze with fury; and the Darling woman, showing what the photographer must have considered a highly satisfactory amount of leg as she crouched dazed and bleeding on the floor.
The bare leg caught Garreth's attention, but the rest of the woman held it. Even with the differences in hairstyle and fashions, he recognized what she wore as just a bit flashier, shorter, and tighter than the dresses on the women in the background. Now he recognized what the reporter meant: hooker. Higher class than a street walker. Today she would call herself an "escort."
That was a break. Being in the life, she must have been busted a few times, and that meant a record of her: names, addresses, companions.
But for that he needed access to Records. Which, unfortunately, meant going to the Hall of Justice and walking into the lion's den.
3
Garreth twisted slowly on the spit over the fire pit. Or so it felt.
Coming down, he hoped to be indifferent to the interview. What happened to him did not matter. Let Internal Affairs ask whatever they liked, ascertaining the facts of the incident in order to submit a report to the Firearm Discharge Review Board, for their hearing to be held later. He just needed to give simple answers --- as true as he dared --- making sure as little blame as possible attached to Harry.
So he told himself walking in Homicide to face Serruto. Except, no Serruto. Belatedly he realized that being Sunday, Serruto was off. The whole office was almost deserted, only Art Schneider and Ron Cohen there. The indifference ended when Art glanced toward him and immediately away again.
Cohen eyed him coldly. "Lien keeps asking why you haven't come to see Harry. Everyone else has. Don't you give a damn how he is?"
That stung as hard as he knew Cohen meant it to. He wanted to yell back that of course he cared, just been afraid to ask. Now he knew Harry was at least alive! "I didn't think I'd be welcome." He paused. "How is he?"
"Hanging on." Cohen turned away.
Art looked up from his typewriter, his expression kinder. "He hasn't regained consciousness. You need to go see him."
Garreth's stomach lurched. So Harry might not be safe yet? "I'll go...after..." He pointed up.
He left them looking torn between I hope they rake you over the coals and Better you than me and took the stairs up to the I.A. office on the fifth floor.
Now he sat...had sat for days it seemed, minus his glasses, head pounding with the misery of daylight...with Sergeants Fong and "Merciless" Mercer taking him over and over Friday's nightmare. Making him feel like the fuckup of all time. A blackboard in front of him had a schematic drawing of Wink's hideout, marked with x's and o's at the front and back doors, and big X in the middle of the livingroom marking where Harry had lain bleeding. The four uniforms had already given their versions of course.
Fong said, for maybe the hundredth time...or maybe the fiftieth --- he and Mercer took turns asking the questions --- "You weren't on duty at the time, were you?"
But for the hundredth time, Garreth made himself reply in a calm, even voice. "No."
"You were on sick leave because of the recent attack on you."
"Yes."
"And had an appointment that afternoon for a psych evaluation."
"Yes."
"Was Inspector Takananda aware of this?"
"Yes."
"Tell us again, then, how you happened to be accompanying Inspector Takananda."
A question not answerable with yes or no. "Harry had an interview with a witness in an unrelated case we had been working and I asked to ride along...not to participate, just to hear what the witness had to say. We expected to return in time for my appointment with Dr. Leonard."
"Yet you did participate in the apprehension of Wink O'Hare."
Garreth's gut started to twist. "Yes."
"Which Inspector Takananda permitted, despite your medical status."
Each time, that question brought a flare of anger. Garreth bit it back once more. "I've told you, I talked him into it."
"Despite your medical status."
"I wasn't thinking of that at the time."
"What were you thinking, Inspector?" Mercer asked.
Blame the oppression of daylight, the repetitive questions, the fire in his throat from smelling their blood. Anger boiled over in him. Garreth jerked to his feet. "I'll tell you what I was thinking! Here was this scumbag who killed a sweet old man for less than a hundred bucks, just for not opening the cash register fast enough, and now, if we hurried, we could nail the son of a bitch's ass! That's what I was thinking, that and nothing else!"
He caught a glance of satisfaction between the two of them. For cracking his seeming patience, which might have bothered them? Or were they thinking: cowboy, or loose cannon. Let them. Either could apply.
"So, now are we going through the deal with my gun all over again?"
The .38, which he let them examine in the first round of questions. It had been affirmed as his personal weapon, not issued by the department, but practiced with regularly so he was proficient with it and knew it to be in working order. The malfunction, he had admitted over and over, was him, not the weapon.
They were eyeing him, assessing his sudden aggression, when the door opened and Serruto came into the room, wearing a polo shirt, jeans, and a grave expression.
Garreth's heart contracted in fear for Harry. He dropped back into the chair, dry-mouthed, while Serruto pulled Mercer aside and murmured in his ear.
Mercer came back to Garreth. "You haven't told us everything about that day, have you, Inspector? You've left out the incident in the restaurant when you and Inspector Takananda went to lunch."
Garreth stared at him, and then at Serruto. There was only one way for them to know about that. Relief and elation made him feel boneless. "Harry's conscious? He's talking?"
Serruto gave him a thin smile.
"Tell us about it the restaurant," Fong said.
So overjoyed about Harry that now nothing else did matter, he told them, omitting only his knowledge of the cause. That gave them a whole new set of questions to ask, of course, hitting even harder on why he ignored the warning of that "anxiety attack" to go along on the arrest. Eventually they ran out of even those questions, returned his gun, and let him go. With instructions to come back tomorrow and sign his statement.
Serruto walked out with him. "Don't miss your next appointment with Dr. Leonard. You understand now you're in for a whole series of them."
"No." Garreth put back on his glasses. "I'm out of here."
Serruto frowned. "Excuse me?"
"At the hospital I gave you the nearest I had to a badge. I meant it then and that hasn't changed." At the elevator he pushed the Down button. "I don't deserve to be a cop and I'm resigning."
"No," Serruto said. "You're too emotional right now to make decisions like that...sick about Harry, guilt-ridden --- deservedly, though you might cut yourself a little slack for extenuating circumstances --- angry for reasons I'll bet you can't articulate."
He had that wrong. Garreth knew exactly why he was angry, and at whom.
"Take sick leave. Talk to the shrink. When your head's straight again, then decide."
Garreth felt too tired to argue. His head pounded. He wanted nothing more than to crawl on top of his pallet and pass out for as long as possible. "Okay, fine. Harry urged me to get away for a while. First, though, I'd like to clear my desk...finish reports I would have worked on if Barber hadn't attacked me." He felt no shame in pulling off his glasses, ready to exert as much persuasion as necessary.
Serruto eyed him narrow-eyed before answering. "All right...as long as that's all you do...sit at a desk. Nothing else. Understood?"
"Yes." That was mostly what he planned.
"Okay. We'll get you an office key. But then, before you do anything else, you go see Harry."
4
A pale, worn-looking Lien flew into his arms, hugging him hard. "You bastard! Why haven't you come before? I couldn't leave but I kept calling and calling and you never answered. I was so afraid after the way you stormed out that you'd done...something stupid!"
Beyond her, Harry looked like a cyborg, almost unrecognizable amid the tubes and monitors and eyes like bruises. He smiled weakly and whispered in a faint croak, "It's turnabout, huh."
Garreth broke loose from Lien to go to the bed. "I'm so sorry. It's all my fault. You were right, I shouldn't have been there. I fucked up. I fucked you up."
"Mik-san..." The beeps of the heart monitor picked up in rhythm. "It's not all your --- "
"No!" Lien cut him off. "You're not pointing fingers today, not even at yourselves." Lien shook Garreth's arm. "Come sit down and relax."
Instead, he leaned close, fighting off the hunger lit by the reek of blood. "You're right, Harry. It isn't all my fault. It's Lane Barber's...because of what she made me."
They stared. Lien said, "Made you?"
He mentally slapped himself. Shut up, idiot! Serruto was right about him being emotional. He took a breath. "I mean, because of what she did to me. But don't worry. I'll track her down --- "
"Stop it!" Lien hissed as the monitor hiccuped once. She dragged Garreth away, out into the hall. "I'm not having this! You may not upset Harry! He's too weak. Besides, what you want to do is stupid. Didn't going along on that arrest show you how much your judgement is screwed up? You know her lawyer will use that against you in court, even if you find her and your involvement doesn't compromise the evidence too much for the case to go to trial. Or," Lien added, "what if you find her and she decides to just finish the job of killing you."
She was right on all points, of course...not that it affected what he had to do. To satisfy her, he nodded meekly.
"Now," she said, "you are going back in and be a placid pool. Happy, happy." She pushed him through the door.
He apologized to Harry. "I guess I need that session with Leonard." And for the rest of the visit, a short one, ended by Lien even before an ICU nurse threw him out, he pretended to be quietly cheerful. Telling Harry about following his advice to get away, inventing a drive through wine country on the way to see his parents and son.
Lien insisted on driving him home. "I can leave Harry for a while now and you need a ride. When he was here earlier, the lieutenant mentioned that the patrols going by your place say your car was still there this afternoon."
On the way she tried talking him into coming back to their place, an offer he gently but firmly turned down.
At the apartment, she followed him in. "The lieutenant also told me he had the landlord let officers in to check on you and they found your phone unplugged. Oh, and it's unplugged again. No wonder I didn't get you or the answering machine. You need to let people reach you." She plugged it back in.
Much as he adored her, he debated shoving her out the door. The pallet in the bedroom called to him. But she could be like standing in front of a train.
Like a train, she steamed past him into the kitchen. "You look thinner every day. Let me fix you something to eat." She reached the refrigerator before he reacted. "Haven't you bought groceries since coming home? What's here is mummifying or going moldy. Your milk's turned red!"
Panic jolted him into action. She had the translucent jug in her hand, twisting off the cap, when he reached her...and stared as he snatched it away.
"It isn't milk. I just use the bottles. It's a...liquid protein mixture. Tomato juice and other veggie juices, soy, minerals, vitamins. Part of my diet." Carefully tightening the lid again, he returned the jug to the refrigerator.
Lien frowned at him. "You don't mean to tell me that's all you're eating?"
"Of course not," he lied. "It's just all I eat here at home, to keep from snacking." Note to moron Mikaelian: if you want to pass as human, stock some human food.
He shut the refrigerator and herded her out of the kitchen to the front door, sweating. He had over-reacted. Would it make her suspicious? He wished he could think, but his mind felt turned to useless sludge.
"Go ahead and snack some," Lien said. " Losing weight too fast isn't healthy."
"Yes. You're right." Go, Lien! Her solicitude terrified him.
As he opened the door, the telephone rang.
"Thanks for bringing me home."
He stepped into the hall, expecting her to follow him.
"Aren't you going to answer that?" she asked.
"Now that I.A.'s had me on the hot seat and I know Harry is going to make it, it can't be anyone important. Let the machine pick up."
But she marched back inside to answer it...and held the phone out to him. "It's your father."
He took it like a live grenade.
Phil Mikaelian's voice snapped out of the receiver. "Finally! Where the hell have you been! We couldn't get an answer here or at the Takanandas! You're grandmother's been going on again since Friday afternoon about that psycho bitch killing you so your mother's frantic."
A typical greeting. As much as Garreth idolized the man, a soft edge or two would be welcome, more Dad and less Deputy Chief. He could be worse, of course, an iron-fisted despot like Grandpa Mikaelian, at whose funeral Grandma Mikaelian looked radiant and Grandma Doyle whispered they ought to stick a pin in the corpse to make sure he was really dead.
"Harry got shot on Friday." Answering in kind worked best with his father...cut to the chase, no apologies for not answering. "It looks now like he'll live, though."
His father's tone changed instantly to concern for a fellow officer. "Shot! Not Garreth," he said to someone at that end. "His partner. What happened!"
"I'll give you all the details when I come home." What fun that would be. "Probably toward the end of the week." Give his father no time for questions now and avoid lies Lien could hear. "I promised the lieutenant I'd finish up reports for Harry and me. Since Grandma's worried about me being dead, put her on the phone and let me talk to her."
"She's gone to Evening Prayer to pay for your soul but here's your mother."
"I don't know what set Mother off again," his mother said. "I thought she was over that after talking to Lien when you were in the hospital. I'm glad you're coming so she can see for herself you're all right. You are, aren't you? How long will you be staying?"
A tricky question. Not long enough to satisfy her, of course, but probably longer than comfortable for him. So he lied. "Maybe a couple of weeks." Way longer than he knew he could bear. Before going he needed to work out an escape plan.
"That's wonderful. You'll be able to spend time with Brian." She paused. "Judith has been wanting to talk to you."
"Judith?" Fear touched him. "Is something wrong with Brian?"
"Oh, no. He's fine. It's something else; she'll tell you."
"Do you know?"
She hedged and wandered off on a tangent, which told him she knew, all right.
"Tell me. Don't let her hit me cold with it."
"Well." He heard her take a breath. "She wants your permission to let Dennis adopt Brian."
With that sentence her forgot all about his impatience to be rid of Lien and on his way back to the Hall. "She what! You can tell her --- no, I'll tell her myself!"
He stabbed down the switch hook. Releasing it again, he punched Judith's number. "What do you mean, you want me to let your husband to adopt my son? What the hell makes you think I'll ever agree to that!"
Her breath caught. "So much for polite amenities. Like father, like son. No, it's all right," she said to someone on the other end. "Just a minute, Garreth." He heard her moving and a door shutting, cutting off background sound. "Now. I thought maybe you'd agree because you love Brian and want what's best for him. Brian and Dennis are so close already, and --- "
"And I'm his father. I stay his father!"
"He needs someone full-time, Garreth, someone he can feel he belongs to. What are you? He's lucky if he sees you four or five times a year now."
"You were the one who insisted on moving back to Davis. My job doesn't give me enough time off to --- "
"Your job is exactly what you let it be!" Her bitterness came over the wire. "It wouldn't have to be twenty-four hours a day every day, but you like it that way. You chose that job over Brian and me."
Oh lord here they went...not even a minute of conversation and down into the same old rut. "Judith, I don't want to start that again."
"With Brian adopted, you wouldn't have to pay child support anymore."
She thought she could buy Brian for her precious Dennis? "Forget it!" he snarled. "Brian is my son and I'm not giving him to anyone else!"
He slammed down the receiver, shaking, and turned to find Lien regarding him with sympathy.
All the anxiety about her presence here returned in an icy flood. "I'm sorry you heard that. Thanks for bringing me home. I'm sorry again for not visiting Harry earlier."
"It means more now that he's awake. Come again tomorrow."
He closed the door behind her, thinking longingly of his pallet. Only now, feeling the sun starting to set, life crept back into him. And he had things to do. He peered out the window to be sure she was out of sight, fetched a notebook from his desk, and headed for his car.
5
The Records clerk took a while time finding Claudia Darling's record. "She goes way back," she said. "You're lucky there's an entry recent enough for the record to still be here, not shipped off to storage."
Yes, thank you Lady Luck.
"No, I don't need to check out the record, just copy a few facts from it." Avoiding a paper trail betraying his continued interest in Lane Barber.
He noted all the names and dates and carried them to Homicide. This time he found himself alone in the office, freeing him to study the notes with no pretense of writing reports.
Claudia Darling had been born Claudia Bologna in 1920. Her yellow sheet listed twelve arrests for solicitation between 1934 --- she had been turning tricks at fourteen? --- and 1945. No criminal complaints after that, but involvement in two no-injury traffic accidents, in 1952 and 1965 --- by which time her name had become Mrs. William Drum with a Twin Peaks address --- and victim of a purse snatching in 1970.
If Lady Luck remained with him, she still lived in San Francisco. He pulled out a phone book to look up listings for William Drum.
While he turned pages, his mind slipped back to his conversation with his ex-wife. Anger boiled up again thinking of it. Let Dennis have Brian? No way in hell! Yet he recognized that Judith had a valid argument. Maybe that was what he found so infuriating. He had never been much of a father...and what kind could he ever be now? Come on, son; let's go out for a bite. You have a hamburger and I'll take the waitress.
Three William Drums lived in San Francisco, none in the Twin Peaks area. Dialing the number of William C. Drum, he connected with a woman too young to be Claudia, and who knew no Claudia Drum. No one answered William R. Drum's phone.
He dialed William R. Drum, Jr. A child answered.
Hearing the high-pitched voice, Garreth grimaced. This did not sound promising. "Is your mommy there?"
"Mommy?" The voice rose, calling. "Mommy!"
A woman's voice came on the line a few moments later. He introduced himself. "I'm attempting to locate a Mrs. Claudia Drum."
"I'm sorry; no one by that name lives here."
He swore silently. Had he hit a dead end? "Do you know a Claudia Drum? She's an older woman, in her sixties. Her husband's name is William Drum."
"Just a minute." Her voice became muffled as she called, "Bill, what's your mother's name?"
Several voices murmured, unintelligible to Garreth, then the voice of an older man came on. "This is William Drum, Sr. You're looking for a woman named Claudia? Can you describe her for me?"
"Five-one, blue-eyed, brunette. Her maiden name was Bologna and in 1970 she lived in the Twin Peaks area."
"You say you're with the police?"
Garreth gave Drum his name and the phone number and invited him to call back. Drum did, then explained that Claudia Drum was his first wife. "We divorced in 1971."
"Do you know what her name is now and where she is?"
Drum hesitated. "I'm curious what you want with her. If all you know is that name and address, this must concern something old."
"We're looking for information on a woman who assaulted her in 1942."
A long silence greeted that remark. Garreth pictured Drum staring nonplused at the receiver, wondering why the police cared about a forty-year-old assault. Finally, with a shrug and a dry note in his voice, Drum said, "Her name is Mrs. James Emerson Thouvenelle and she lives on the wall." He gave a Presidio Heights address and phone number.
Garreth wrote them down, impressed. Claudia had done well for herself, rising from hooker to the mansions overlooking the Presidio. He wondered if Drum's dry tone indicated he knew he had been a mere stepping-stone to that mansion. Garreth made sure he thanked William Stepping-stone Drum warmly before hanging up and dialing the Thouvenelle number.
How would his request to see her be received? As a rude reminder of her past?
When he mentioned Mala Babra, however, the rich voice on the other end of the line laughed. "What do you want with that crazy singer? Are things so slow for you boys you're digging into the basement files? Yes, I'll talk to you."
Garreth saw one problem: identification. It was all very well saying on the phone he was from the police. What did he do when she asked to see ID at her house? Well, he could put in the fix if necessary. "Will this evening be convenient?"
"This evening? You've made me curious about what's so urgent. How old are you?"
His turn to stare baffled at the phone. "Twenty-seven."
"That'll work. Come on out."
That baffled him even more. What would work?
The heavy front door at her address bore an ornate lion's head knocker in the middle. Before he touched it, the door swung open. A pouter pigeon of a woman looking the epitome of grandmother and matron eyed him, then nodded. "Yes, you'll do. You even look a little travel worn."
He blinked. "Excuse me?"
"You are the detective who called, aren't you? Mikaelian?"
"Yes, ma'am. You're Claudia Thouvenelle?"
"Yes. Please come in, and follow my lead. What's your first name?"
"Garreth." He followed her to a set of double pocket doors down the hallway.
She slid open one and leaned into the library behind it. "James," she said to the man sitting in a leather chair, "This is Garreth Kane, the son of my old girlfriend Katherine. You remember me telling you about her, don't you? Gary's on a five-hour layover to Tokyo and Kathy asked him to come by while he was here. We'll be across the hall chatting if you need me."
That explained her remarks.
The man nodded, and she led Garreth across the hall to a living room, where she settled on a sofa. She met his eyes with her own, unnaturally blue --- contact lenses? --- and cool as ice. "I see no need to reveal the long-dead past to my husband, though understand I'm not ashamed of it. I even find the idea of talking about those days after all these years a bit nostalgic. What do you want to know about that madwoman?"
"Everything you can tell me: who she was, where she came from, who her friends were."
She blinked, in disappointment, Garreth would have sworn. "I don't know anything except that she nearly disfigured me. She was crazy. It wasn't my fault if the naval officer preferred me to her. Who wouldn't prefer a woman-sized woman to that great galumphing elephant?"
Garreth silently compared the matron with her blue hair and crepe-skinned neck to the redhead still looking twenty, who had her choice of men to bed and bleed. Yes, a woman her height in those days might meet some ridicule but Lane had the last laugh on her generation now.
"May I ask what your interest in her is after all these years?"
"We think she has information we need on a current investigation."
"Have you checked the state mental institutions? She was quite unbalanced and should have been confined."
Garreth wrinkled his forehead. "Then why did you drop the charges?"
Claudia shrugged. "As a favor for a friend, Don Lukert, the manager of the Red Onion. He was afraid the owners might be upset by the implication prostitutes worked the club, though of course we did, and openly...so I agreed to drop the charges if he'd fire her and use his influence to see that she couldn't find another job in North Beach. He did and I did."
Vindictive bitch, Garreth thought. Aloud he said, "This manager. Is his name Donald Lukert?"
"No, Eldon."
"Do you know where he is today?" Mr. Lukert might have known something about his singer.
Claudia shook her head. "I could afford to get out of the game after Armistice and dropped my old acquaintances." She smiled. "I was a war profiteer...all those young soldiers and sailors with pay burning a hole in their pockets, hungry for female companionship and sex as an affirmation of life, even if they had to pay for it. And I saved every penny I could, eventually investing in construction when one of my last johns talked about how all those returning soldiers were going to create a housing boom."
Her eyes focused past him. "You know the scene in Gone with the Wind where Scarlett swears she'll never be hungry again? That was me in 1933! My family almost starved during the Depression. I started turning tricks at thirteen to help us eat...skinny as a rail, dressed in rags, giving head jobs and stand-ups in alleys, as often for a loaf of bread or can of beans as cash." She grimaced at the memory
Thirteen! Garreth shuddered inwardly at the thought of being that desperate.
"Until I used some money from one trick to go to Gone with the Wind. It changed my life! The scene where Scarlett turned curtains into a dress to go visit Rhett Butler was my light on the road to Damascus. If you're going to sell yourself, it told me, do it with style and don't sell yourself cheap." She glanced around complacently, caught him checking out the room, too, and laughed. "As you see, I haven't."
The story showed him what drove her social climbing, and brought admiration for her survivor and opportunist skills. Lane's youth spanned the same era. Had it turned her into a killer?
That jerked him back to his reason for talking to Claudia. "So you lost track of Lukert?"
She nodded. "I did go by the Red Onion a few years later but it had changed name and ownership. Don wasn't there. If he's still in the city, he's probably in a nursing home now. He was in his late forties back then."
"Did Mr. Lukert ever talk to you about Miss Babra?"
"Oh, a couple of times perhaps. We had some laughs over how grotesque she was."
A determined survivor, but still a bitch, Garreth reflected.
"She tried to claim she was a Balkan princess. She carried the blood of ancient nobility in her veins, is how she put it. She gave Don some fantastic story about having escaped from eastern Europe ahead of Hitler's storm troopers. But she wasn't European. That Bela Lugosi accent she used came and went all the time, and a client of mine heard her speaking what she claimed was her native language and said it was nothing but a hodgepodge of German and Russian."
Garreth made a note of that. German matched Lane's choice of names, but where did the Russian fit in? Possibly hers had been a mixed German and Russian community? Insular enough to keep speaking their own languages in addition to English.
After asking questions for another ten minutes without learning anything more useful, he closed the notebook and stood. "I think that's all I need. Thank you for your time."
She escorted him to the door, speaking in a voice pitched to carry. "I'm so glad to hear Kate's doing well. I really must give her a call. Thank you so much for her number."
Garreth sighed in relief as the door closed behind him. She never came close to asking for his ID. Keep smiling, Lady Luck.
6
Anything Records had on Eldon Lukert had long since gone into deep storage, and he found no telephone listing for an Eldon Lukert in the greater San Francisco area. Garreth went through all the office's phone books, including Oakland, Marin County and as far south as Palo Alto and still came up empty. Claudia might be correct in her opinion he was in a nursing home. That was something impossible to check at this hour, so he spent the rest of the night writing up reports. Alone and with no interruptions he finished them shortly before dawn.
He crashed onto his pallet at home as daylight mashed him.
Until the piercing beep of his alarm clock dragged him back to consciousness after noon. Being a creature of the night in a mostly daylight world sucked. Staring at his face in the mirror as he shaved, he forced a smile. It's showtime, folks. Time to play human. And he went off to visit Harry.
That, at least, he enjoyed. They still had Harry plugged into a battery of machines and a web of tubes plugged into him, but his eyes looked less sunken and his voice had improved from a croak to a breathy rasp. Lien looked more like her old self, too.
"And how are you," she wanted to know.
He smiled at her. "Feeling righteous. I finished all my reports."
"So you're leaving for your folks' soon?"
He shook his head. "I have a couple of things to see to here first." At the flash of concern in her eyes he said, "Housekeeping. Shopping." He plucked at the jeans beginning to hang on him like a homeboy's. "A few new clothes."
Necessary at some point, true...sooner if his boots quit fitting. Today he shopped for Eldon Lukert.
Letting his fingers do the walking...sitting in his apartment with the phone book. He started with the A's in the nursing home section of the yellow pages and worked his way through the listings. one phone call at a time. If necessary, he was prepared to call every home in the Bay Area.
He thought he might have to. He struck out on every San Francisco facility down to the W's. Then he thought Lady Luck smiled again. Not only could he feel sunset coming, the woman answering at the Windsong Adult Care Home said, "Eldon Lukert? No, we don't have a patient by that name now but it sounds familiar. Just a minute." She went off the line.
Garreth crossed his fingers.
She came back several minutes later. "We did have an Eldon Lukert until last month."
"That's the gentleman I need. Can you tell me where he went?"
She paused. "I'm sorry. He didn't leave in the sense you mean. He died."
Garreth hung up and slumped back in his chair. Crap. Dead ends came no deader than that. Now what? Trying to track other former associates needed their names, which meant attempting to look at the Bieber file. Even if he managed that and got the names...and found some of them --- he lucked out with Claudia --- would they know anything more personal than Claudia had. The closest they had to personal information on her were her belongings.
The apartment had to be the key. Somewhere among those pieces of her, collected and kept over the years, there must be a clue to where she came from, and from that, some indication where she might go to hide. If only he could find it.
Driving to the apartment, he approached the door with caution. He had been invited in once. Would it still hold good, as the legend said? Or would the fiery pain bar him again?
At the door, his body still felt cool and comfortable. He leaned against the door. Still no fire seared him.
Wrench!
That hurt as much as ever.
He leaned against the wall inside, breathing deeply until the pain faded. How dark the hall had looked that first time he walked down it behind Lane Barber. No more. For once he felt appreciated his vampire vision; he could move around the apartment and study it all he needed without lights to arouse the curiosity and suspicion of neighbors.
He stepped into the living room...and jerked to a halt in shock.
It had been stripped clean! The furniture remained, but the paintings, the sculpture, the books and objects on the shelves had all gone.
Garreth ran for the bedroom and jerked open the closet. Her clothes still hung inside. In the kitchen he found the few items in the cupboards untouched, too.
Back in the living room he stared around him. When had she come back? Sometime since yesterday morning, obviously. She had come back and taken the items important to her. How did she know the apartment was not being watched?
Perhaps because she herself had been watching?
He sat down at the desk, swearing. She must never have left the city. What had she done, checked into one of the cheap residence hotels in the Tenderloin in some kind of disguise? With her height, she could even pass as a man. She had stayed, even with the whole police force looking for her, and watched, and when it was safe, coolly retrieved her belongings.
What was it her agent had said? All ice and steel inside. Yeah!
A shiver moved down his spine. The maiden is powerful. Beware of such a maiden. Made of ice and steel and with over forty years head start on him in vampirism and living experience, did he really stand a chance of finding her? What might she do if she suspected he was after her?
Then he shook his head. Personal danger should be the least of his worries. His life was already gone. All she could take away from him now was existence. On the other hand, she had the capacity to harm a great many more people if allowed to continue unchecked.
So...he must keep going.
He needed a direction, though. Any help he might have gained from her belongings had disappeared. He had to proceed on what he already knew. What did he know?
The writing paper still remained in the desk. He took out a sheet and itemized his knowledge. She came, probably, from a Germanic background. She sometimes used Germanic names. She spoke a German and Russian combination.
He made a note to find out through one of the local universities the location of German and Russian groups near each other in the United States around World War I when she was born.
Could any of her belongings regionalize her? Too bad he did not know rocks well enough to describe those in the type tray to a geologist. If all of them were childhood "treasures" as other objects in the tray seemed to suggest, and if two or more came from a single geographic area, it might have been a lead. All he remembered, though, was the black shark tooth. Was that something he could use?
The apartment had given him as much as it was ever going to. He left, checking out the window beside the door to make sure the street was clear before passing through to the porch, then drove down to Fisherman's Wharf.
A few of the shops in the area remained open, catching late tourist trade. He wandered into one. "Do you have shark teeth?" he asked the girl behind the counter.
She took him to a section where the wall displayed small circles of jawbone lined with rows of wicked teeth.
He studied the teeth. They looked the same shape as the teeth he had seen, but were all white, not black.
"Do you have any black shark teeth?"
She blinked. "Black? I've never seen black ones before."
He tried a similar shop farther down the pier with the same result. Neither the two clerks nor a customer there had never seen or heard of black shark teeth, either. The time had come, he decided, to seek expert advice. In the morning he would call one of the universities and ask them where black shark teeth came from.
Morning. He chafed at that. Why did it always have to be during the day when he could accomplish anything? He crossed Jefferson and began wandering through the arcades of the Cannery, peering into its shop windows fuming in impatience. Nothing was open when he felt most like working. Lane had taken convenience from him, too.
Then, in the window of a jewelry shop, he saw them...earrings hanging on a T-shaped plastic stand, hooped for pierced ears, with small black teeth dangling from them! The shop sign said Closed, but the lights remained on and a man moved along a counter inside. Garreth rapped on the window.
The man turned and pointed at the sign in the window stating business hours.
"I just want to ask where the shark teeth earrings come from," Garreth called, automatically reaching into his jacket pocket before remembering he had no badge there.
The man stared tensely until Garreth's hand came out of the pocket empty, then: I'm closed, he mouthed. Come back tomorrow.
"I just want to know where those earrings come from!"
But the man shook his head and walked into a back room. Moments later all the lights except the security lights went out.
Garreth debated what he might accomplish passing through the door and following the man, other than frightening him...and maybe tripping an alarm the man also set from the back room. Better not risk that.
He leaned his forehead against the window, straining to read the card under the earrings. Without luck. Letters upside-down and backward he could work out, but not print that size from this distance.
Standing there, he tasted life without the badge...no authority, no leverage. And realized how alone he stood against his quarry. The maiden is powerful. He shivered in a chill blowing down his unprotected back.
7
The TV morning news warned citizens to drive cautiously. Fog had rolled in overnight and blanketed the entire city so heavily that it lay in a dim, shadowless twilight. Foghorns sounded from Mile Rocks east to Fleming Point and from Point San Pablo south to Hunters Point. Garreth reveled in it. Daylight remained above it, weighting and weakening him, but not as heavily. He felt almost comfortable on the sofa, feet on the coffee table, dialing the number of the biology department at the University of San Francisco.
"My name is Garreth Mikaelian. I need to talk to someone who can tell me where certain kinds of shark teeth are found."
He would have thought that was a simple request, but the phone went on hold for what seemed an eternity before a reedy male voice said, "This is Dr. Edmund Faith. You're the gentleman who needs to know where to find certain breeds of sharks?"
"No, I need to know where their teeth are found. The other day I cane across a black shark tooth in a shop on Fisherman's Wharf and I'd to find another and have a pair of earrings made for my wife's birthday. However, the girl in the shop had no idea where the tooth came from and neither did anyone else I asked."
"A black shark's tooth?"
"Yes. What part of the world do they come from?"
"A black one would be a fossil. You need to talk to a paleontologist."
Par for the course. How many investigative lines had he followed that went just like this. "Can you suggest someone, please?"
"Try Dr. Henry Ilford." He gave Garreth a phone number.
Garreth jotted the number down, and dialed the new number.
Dr. Ilford, a secretary informed Garreth, was out. Please leave a number.
Garreth remembered from his brief college days how difficult it could be finding a particular professor when one needed him. "Might I talk to a grad student, then."
"I'll see if any are in their office."
The phone went on hold again. Garreth drummed his fingers. As much as he preferred phoning to running around in daylight, perhaps he should have driven to the campus. On hold he found it too easy to imagine the secretary finishing a letter then going on coffee break, forgetting about him.
Before long, though, another voice came on the line, pleasantly female.
Garreth repeated his question. "Can you tell me areas of the US where black fossil shark teeth are found?"
"Well." She drew out the word. "Fossil shark teeth can be found in about seventy-five percent of the country. It's almost all been under water at one time or another."
Garreth sighed. Seventy-five percent? So much for the tooth as a lead to Lane's background.
"But," the young woman went on, "the only places I know to find the black ones are on the eastern seaboard and in western Kansas."
Garreth scribbled in his notebook. "Just there? How easy are those teeth to find?"
"I think you have to dig back east, but they're close to the surface in Kansas."
Close to the surface. "Then a kid might find one without much trouble?"
"I'm sure he could. I'm told it's possible to pick them up just walking across a plowed field or in the cuts along roads and streams."
Which could be how Lane acquired hers. He recalled the other fossils in the type tray. "Are there many kinds of fossils available in the Kansas area?"
"The limestone is full of small things like shells, yes."
He thanked her and lung up, then sat staring at his scribbled notes. Kansas. The postmark the lab brought up on the burned envelope had a 67 in it. Harry said that Zips starting with 67 were all in Kansas. He ticked his tongue against his teeth. Did the trail smell warmer?
Garreth went back to the phone book, this time for the number of the anthropology department. "I need to talk to someone who can tell me where immigrant German and Russian groups settled in this country."
That brought him more interminable time on hold while the secretary hunted up a likely prospect. She came back suggesting he call in two hours, when a Dr. Iseko would be in his office. He had no grad student or teaching assistant handy.
Hanging up, Garreth sat considering Zip codes. If the one on the envelope did start 67, maybe he could find a western Kansas town with the letters visible on the postmark. What had they decided? The first letter had to be B or D, with the slanted visible feet making the next letter most likely an A, followed by something with a curved lower line: C, O, or U. Or G or Q. He brought his road atlas in from the car and went through the Kansas section of the index for possible matches to the town name on the postmark. Eight started with BA or DA followed by C, U, or G. Possibly wasted effort if Dr. Iseko said Swedes and Scots settled Kansas. With a town named Dauphin, Frenchmen may have. Bachman and Baumen sounded German, though.
He read on down the list for other German or Russian sounding names. Goessel fit that, and Liebenthal. Then one name leaped at him: Pfeifer! Garreth turned hurriedly to the Kansas map and located Pfeifer. Liebenthal and another German-sounding town, Schoenchen, lay just miles from it. After locating Bachman on farther south, he clenched a fist in triumph. Yes! None of the town names sounded Russian but so many Germanic ones had to be more than coincidence. He might not need the anthropologist's input...except facts should always be verified. In case your theory turned out wrong.
He tried Dr. Iseko again and this time reached him. "I'm a researcher working for the author James Michener. We're interested in finding a community of German immigrants in Kansas living in close proximity to Russian immigrants."
"I'm afraid there are none like that in Kansas," the anthropologist replied.
Garreth's stomach dropped. He swore silently in disappointment. "What's the ethnicity of..." He pretended to be consulting notes. "...the town of Pfeifer, then?"
"Where exactly is that in Kansas?"
Garreth checked the road atlas. "Near Hays."
"Ah." At the other end real papers rustled. "Ellis County. That area was settled by a group called the Usere Lueute, or Volga Germans --- or Rooshans, as they're called locally --- Germans who immigrated to southern Russia 1763 at the invitation of Catherine the Great, who promised them land, religious freedom, and freedom from military conscription. When that seemed about to be revoked a century later, they immigrated to this country."
Something electric sizzled through Garreth, standing his hair on end. "Rooshans? They're a kind of mixed German and Russian, then? Does their language reflect that?" Claudia said Lane spoke a hodgepodge of German and Russian.
"Yes, indeed. It's a very unique language. An acquaintance of mine wrote his dissertation on it."
Garreth' pulse jumped. He forced his tone to remain politely inquiring. "How large an area did they settle?"
"The Catholic group is mainly around Ellis County. However, there are Lutherans and Mennonites, too, spread out farther...into Bellamy and Barton counties, and some into Rush and Ness."
Garreth wrote it all down. After thanking the doctor and hanging up, he scrambled back to his atlas. Bachman lay in southern Ellis County, about ten miles west of Pfeifer, and he located Baumen northeast in Bellamy County. Another call, this one to the reference librarian at the central library, who, when he again trotted out the magic name of James Michener, consulted the library's collection of phone books and informed him yes, there were listings for Biebers in both Bachman and Baumen, Kansas.
He hung up with excitement almost negating the misery of daylight. It fit. It all fit. Lane had to come from that area, either Bachman or Baumen. Though he could not be certain without further investigation. Investigation not possible by phone.
He had to go there in person.
8
Garreth made his last visit to Harry an evening one, so he could leave straight from there and drive in the comfort of night. He sat telling Harry how much he looked forward to spending two weeks with his family and son. Feeling wretched every moment for lying.
"I'll miss you," Harry said. Finally talking in a normal voice. Though still in ICU, he looked better every day, less like a cyborg with some of the tubes gone. "But I'm glad you're finally getting away from everything here for a while."
Lien walked him not just to the elevator but out to his car. "I didn't want to talk around Harry."
His gut lurched. That sounded serious. "Is something going wrong?"
"Not with Harry." She looked up at him. "Are you really going to Davis?"
"Of course."
She peered into the ZX's back seat, at his suitcase and an ice chest there. "For how long?"
That caught him off guard. Surely she did not guess the ice chest held ice and jugs of rat blood.
Before he answered, she said, "You're going after Lane Barber, aren't you?"
He considered denying it but her eyes turned knowingly toward him. "I have to. I'm the only one who can find her."
She frowned. "Why?"
"It's complicated." Make that: impossible to explain. "Please don't tell Harry."
"Not until he's stronger." She paused. "I consulted I Ching this morning."
His gut did another lurch. "Did you get the maiden is powerful again?"
She punched his arm. "Hush and listen. Never forget that one...but today's hexagram was number twelve, Standstill. It says that heaven and earth are out of communion and that all things are benumbed. Confusion and disorder prevail."
He grimaced. That was certainly true for him.
"Inferior people are in ascendancy but don't allow yourself to be turned from your principles. There are change lines in the second and fourth places, advising that a great man will suffer the consequences of a standstill and by his willingness to suffer, ensure the success of his principles. However..." Her eyes bored up into him. "...acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. Setting one's self up to alter things according to one's own judgment can end in mistake and failure."
That sounded like a warning against vigilantism. But he had no plans to take the law into his own hands, just find Lane and see she was arrested. "What else? The change lines make a new hexagram."
"The second one is number fifty-nine, Dispersion. It suggests success, especially after journeying and, of course, perseverance." She smiled sadly. "That's when I knew what you were going to do. Persevere, Garreth, and be true to yourself." She threw her arms around him, hugging him fiercely. "Stay safe, please."
He buried his face in her hair, throat tight. "I'll do my best."
9
While not dinner-plate flat as Garreth expected, the gold-brown Kansas hills, so unlike the yellow ones of California or those in San Francisco, rolled to an almost unimaginably distant horizon, sparsely dotted with trees and human constructs. The sky arched overhead, a cobalt bowl of infinity broken only here and there by wisps of cloud. The sun burned Garreth's eyes even behind his glasses. Driving south toward Bachman out of Hays, he felt overwhelmed, a mote crushed between the immensity of earth and sky. He wondered whether it might have been wiser to drive from Davis during the day instead of only at night, sleeping wrapped in his air mattress pallet in the car at public campsites by day. Then he could have gradually accustomed himself to the broadened horizon instead of being suddenly hit by it on this drive.
To take his mind off the unexpected agoraphobia, Garreth thought ahead to Bachman, rehearsing his search strategy and cover story. Knocking on Bieber doors asking if they had a sister, aunt, cousin, daughter named Madelaine would alerting Lane to his pursuit. Instead, he had come purporting to hunt relatives named Pfeifer. Last month before her death, his grandmother had dropped a bombshell on the family, that she was not the natural mother of Garreth's father. Phillip had been born to a Mary Pfeifer, who roomed with them for seven months...pregnant, though they never realized it until they found a newborn baby wrapped in a blanket on her bloody bed one morning with a note from Mary saying she was unfit to be a mother and she was leaving the baby for someone who would be a good mother. They never saw Mary again. Garreth's newlywed grandmother raised the boy as her own. She knew nothing about Mary except a mention of Hays, Kansas, and a town name, Ba-something, on the smudged postmark of a letter Mary tore up. Garreth's father had no interest in the woman who abandoned him at birth, but Garreth had decided to look for this unknown branch of the family tree...and maybe learn what happened to Mary. Among old family photos they had found one of three young women with his grandmother, the back labeled: Me, Bridget, Mary, Kathleen...without indicating which girl was which.
The photo and writing were real, one of Grandma Doyle's taken in the late twenties when she and the other girls were all sixteen and seventeen and fresh from Ireland. The cardboard square stiffened the inside pocket of his jacket. Feeling it, Garreth remembered three days ago, when she handed it to him.
"May it bring you she who killed you," his grandmother said, "and then a peaceful sleep."
She had known what he was the moment he walked in the house that morning. Behind his mother exclaiming in horror, "Garreth, you're turning into skin and bones!" she reached for the silver cross on her neck.
After hugging his mother he reached out to his grandmother...only to have her back away and hurriedly leave the room. "Grandma!" He stared stricken after her.
His mother touched him on the arm. "Please forgive her. I think she just needs time to accept that, for once, her Feeling was wrong."
Garreth gave silent thanks his mother misinterpreted the reason for his distress. "I understand." Which did nothing, however, to lessen the pain of being feared.
Dread lay more on his side in telling his father about Harry when his father came home at noon...out in the back yard, away from his mother. He turned the incident in the restaurant into a little dizziness, which he said he had experienced now and again since "the Barber woman" caught him by surprise and slammed his head into the wall, the resulting concussion enabling her to overpower him. In Phil Mikaelian's opinion, only psychos and wimps had panic attacks. Otherwise Garreth told everything fit for humans to hear, making no attempt to minimize his screw-up. And braced for the reaction.
Jaw tight, his father listened without interruption before exploding. "Son of bitch! Who the hell did you think you were: John Wayne, or Dirty Harry! Of all the stupid, irresponsible --- " He sucked in a breath. "I understand wanting to nail this scumbag, but it's not like Shane strapping a blown knee and injecting pain-killers so he can play another game. No one's life is on the line in football. You --- "
He cut his father off. "You're not telling me anything I haven't already hit myself over the head with a hundred times. Not even I.A. can make me feel worse than I do already."
His father's scowl smoothed. He sighed. "So what are they going to do to you?"
Garreth shrugged. "The review board won't hold its hearing for weeks, probably. I won't know until then."
"Well, it doesn't matter." His father slung an arm across Garreth's shoulders. "You'll man up and take your lumps without whining, right, even if it means suspension and being busted back to uniform?"
And lots of couch time, which Garreth refrained from mentioning. Shrinks, too, being only for psychos and wimps. "Right."
"Oh, and you're going to straighten Judith out about this adoption nonsense, right?"
That mention tightened Garreth's gut but he said, "Right," again.
To his relief, after a slap on the back, his father left him alone, heading into the house for lunch.
Garreth sat down at the foot of their big oak tree. The earth welcomed him, easing some daylight's discomfort. Lying back against the trunk, he had looked up and seen the platform his father built for Shane and him when they were kids. His father still tended it religiously, keeping it safe for Brian, and for Shane's kids when they visited.
Brian. Garreth sighed. As soon as he went over to visit, the question of adoption was bound to come up again. He closed his eyes wearily. What should he do about it?
Feet whispered down the back steps and across the lawn toward him, but he left his eyes closed. The scent of lavender overwhelming that of blood told him who it was.
The feet stopped a short distance away. "Dearg-dul. Undead," his grandmother said quietly.
Fighting his eyes open, he saw her lower herself into a lawn chair.
"Why is it you're walking?"
He sat up. "Grandma, I'm not dead! Look at me. I walk; I breathe; my heart beats. I reflect in mirrors. I can touch your cross, too."
"But what do you eat? Do you still love the sun?"
Rather than answer that, he said, "I'm still and always your grandson. I won't hurt you or any of the family." Then after hesitating: "I don't drink human blood."
She regarded him uncertainly, then, with a quick touch on the cross around her neck, patted the side of the chair. "Come to me."
She sat in the sun, but he moved to the ground beside her.
She reached out to touch stroke his hair. "Is it to avenge yourself on she who did this to you that you can't sleep?"
He considered several answers before giving the one she seemed to want. "Yes."
She sighed. "Poor unquiet spirit."
While he winced at that, he welcomed the easing of her fear. "I need your help."
"To find her?"
Garreth nodded. "And get away from here without upsetting Mom and Dad. I can't stay without giving away that I've changed."
She nodded. "So what will you be wanting me to do?"
At the fierce tone of her voice, he had to laugh. She looked so righteously angry, so ready to go into battle against the fiend who had done this to her grandson, that Garreth regretted needing so little from her: a photograph and abetting his escape. Coming onto his knees, he hugged her.
She hugged him back and then, to his dismay, began sobbing. He knew he was hearing her cry over his grave.
He held her until she quieted, wondering...could she be right? Was he nothing but a temporarily animated instrument of revenge?
It made a hell of a thought to take with him when he visited Brian that afternoon. Thinking it, he stood back a mental distance from himself and the boy. For the first time he saw the formality in his son's attitude toward him, so different from Brian's easy behavior with his stepfather. Logic told Garreth it was natural; Brian saw Dennis every day, whereas, for six years, since the boy was two, Garreth had been no more than a visitor. How much less would he be from now on?
"Judith," he said, "I've been thinking about the adoption."
She looked quickly at him. "I'm sorry I brought it up. I didn't know then what happened to you."
He shrugged. "It doesn't matter. If you and Dennis want --- "
She shook her head, cutting him off. "It can wait. You've got enough already to deal with."
He had regarded her with surprise, but nodded, and for once, a visit went amicably. So amicably he regretted having to dodge Judith's dinner invitation.
"Mom's probably planned something special at home."
Yes...stuffed porkchops, one of his favorites growing up. Walking into the house, he smelled them with dismay. Evading lunch had worked by waiting until his father left, then claiming loss of appetite over confronting Judith about the adoption issue. His mother accepted that. He needed more to finesse his way out of dinner. Saying he had already eaten, taking Brian out for hamburgers, did not cut it.
"You've always had room for my porkchops," his mother said.
His father fixed him with a hard stare that said: I don't care if you've eaten a whole cow; you will eat what your mother's cooked!
Grandma Doyle jumped to her feet."The phone."
His father frowned. "I don't hear it."
"It's going to ring." She hurried into the hall. They heard her pick up the phone and talk, then she peered back around the diningroom door. "It's for you, Garreth. Someone named Chris Murdock."
Grandma to the rescue! Now he needed to play his part.
Before driving home, he had spent hours considering escape plans. Any visit was always too short for his mother, so the trick was getting around his father, finding an excuse for leaving which Phil Mikaelian not only accepted but encouraged in the face of maternal objections. Eventually he approached the problem as he would cracking a suspect. Use what pushed the subject's buttons.
He stood in the hall talking to the dial tone. "Hey, man, what's up? ... Sure I remember. ... Yeah, of course I would. When --- ... When? ... Just a minute." He came back to the diningroom. "I've been invited to go hunting in Montana on the family ranch of this narcotics officer Harry and I know. What do you think, Dad? Do I say yes?"
Envy lit his father's eyes. "Of course. When is it?"
"That's the kicker." Garreth grimaced. "His father's flying into Sacramento tomorrow to pick up Chris and a cousin who lives there. If I want to go, I have to meet them at the airport."
"Tomorrow!"his mother protested. "No! You just got here!"
He sent a look of appeal at his father and watched the wheels turn: guns, big game, testosterone party.
"This is pretty last minute, isn't it?"
An expected question. Garreth nodded. "Another guy had to cancel and Harry told Chris it would be good for me to go."
Like him, his father thought the world of Harry, and Garreth shamelessly played to that. For Harry, struggling back from near death, to worry about Garreth tipped the scale. As he knew it would.
Hunting had occupied the rest of the dinner conversation...reminisces about past hunting trips of his father's and ones father and sons took together...advice on outfitting himself once he reached Montana, since there was no time to do so here. While his mother scowled at the two of them.
Garreth welcomed that. Tears of disappointment would made him feel truly rotten. The tears came the next morning, saying goodbye, but the feel of the photo in his jacket pocket helped him steel himself and focus on what he had to do.
10
Lien, Harry, San Francisco, and his family seemed a universe away from these Kansas plains. Just I Ching lingered with him. Persevere. Yes, he would, to the end of the earth and time...whatever it took to find Lane. That threat of failure if he set himself up as judge kept ringing in his head, however. Reminding him that even without a badge, he must act as lawfully as though he carried it.
The highway entered Bachman. After asking directions, Garreth found the high school. Climbing out of the car, warm wind struck him. It had some qualities of a sea breeze...pushiness, an aggressive wildness, a singing contempt for the land and what crawled there. It buffeted him, bringing the scents of fresh-watered grass and dusty earth, and pushed him up the steps into the building.
He located the office and the principal, a Mr. Charles Dreher, who listened to his story with interest. "Every since Roots was on TV, more and more people are hunting theirs. I'm happy to help."
Which consisted of taking Garreth to the small Board of Education building and down a steep set of stairs to a dim space less basement than cellar. Smelling and feeling wonderfully of the earth. While Dreher apologized for the conditions, Garreth sucked in a long, contented breath and wanted to stay forever. It took a hard mental shake to refocus.
They hunted through file envelopes stacked together on metal shelves and through ancient metal and wooden file cabinets. A secretary joined them eventually. "Graduation pictures? I know I've seen a whole pile of them somewhere."
Which turned out to be on a top shelf, still framed, the glass so dusty it rendered the sepia-toned photographs all but invisible. Dreher returned to the high school, leaving Garreth and the secretary to bring the pictures up into the light and clean the glass. But when all that had been done, and Garreth compared the picture of the girls in the 1930 to 1940 classes with his mental image of Lane Barber, while pretending to compare them to his photo, he found no match.
The secretary wiped at a smudge on her nose. "Who is it you're looking for?" When he gave her his story she said, "You know, a postmark here doesn't mean the family lived here. Rural mail gets our postmark, so they could have had a farm, or lived somewhere like Dixon, that's too small for its own post office and also gets our postmark. Then she'd probably have gone to a one-room school. Those are pretty much all gone now, though, and I don't know where you'd find their records. Why don't you sit down with a phone book and call Pfeifers in the area?"
He shook his head. "I don't want to go busting in on people's lives until I know we're related. Besides, being pregnant out of wedlock, Mary Pfeifer might not have been her real name."
The secretary considered that and nodded.
She had a valid point about Lane going to school elsewhere. The postmark meant only that the correspondent lived here now, not necessarily then. Which meant he needed to check other high schools in the area...assuming if the correspondent moved, it had not been far, staying in the comfort zone of the ethnic area.
Now he needed to sneak in Lane's name. "My grandmother's diary mentioned something she didn't tell us --- maybe forgot --- that another girl came to visit one time, a Maggie Bieber, or maybe Maddie --- the ink smudged --- and Mary hid in her room, asking my grandmother to say she wasn't there. I'm wondering if it was the person who wrote her. It sounds like a name from here."
"Maybe your grandmother wrote down the name wrong," the secretary said. "We have Biekers, but I don't know any Biebers."
Checking her phone book confirmed Bachman had listings for only Biekers. Garreth felt a lurch of dismay. Had the reference librarian in San Francisco telling him Bachman had telephone listings for Biebers heard him wrong? Yet Lane called herself Bieber and he clearly remember the letter being addressed to Madelaine Bieber.
Back in his car, Garreth pushed dismay aside. Maybe Pfiefer had Biebers.
He headed east on a county road. A few miles out of town it took him through the Dixon the secretary mentioned. Not just a small town, he found. Dead...two houses, with overgrown foundations all that remained of several others, a gas station-come-general store, and a grain elevator --- a fascinating row of huge, melded columns...a giant tombstone marking the town's passing.
In Pfeifer, he stopped at a gas station and checked the phone book before going on to the high school. It listed Biekers, no Biebers. Still, he pushed on to the high school and was handed over to their school librarian, who showed him to the shelves holding almost a century's worth of yearbooks. He went through those from 1930 to 1940...where he found Biekers and some Pfeifers, but no Biebers. And none of the faces were Lane's.
Gloomily, he wondered what his chances were of finding Lane this way and whether he was totally off base about where to search. On which depressing note, he headed back to Hays.
11
At least Harry was doing well. His voice sounded strong on the phone that evening, telling Garreth they were probably releasing him from ICU in another day or two. How were Garreth's folks, and Brian, he wanted to know. Lien must not have told him yet about his partner's true activities.
Lien came on. "How are you doing?"
He sighed. "Not making much progress."
"I'm glad," she said. "You know I worry about you."
Canny Lien. For a moment he imagined himself in Harry's place, hearing an innocent conversation different from the actual one. "I'm not forgetting I Ching. Do you have any new hexagrams for me?" Something encouraging, something lucky.
"Standstill again, without change lines this time."
After hanging up he sat sipping blood from one of the motel glasses. The hexagram fit. All things certainly were stagnant and benumbed. If he believed in I Ching, it seemed to indicate futility in searching around Bachman. So should he switch focus to Baumen...or was that a dead end, too?
One way to find out...if the city library here were still open.
A phone call established it was, and provided him with directions there. Once there, he hunted up the phone book collection at the reference desk, then stood eyeing the row of thin directories on the "Local" shelf. Might as well go for broke, he decided...and pulled the one for Baumen.
Opening it, he held his breath...paged to the B's...sighed in relief. Houston, we have Biebers. Twenty-five of them, ten with rural addresses, and two in a town called Lebeau.
"You're looking for Biebers?"
He looked up to find the reference librarian quirking a brow at him, and realized he must have spoken aloud. "Sort of. I wasn't sure I'd find any. Around Bachman there were only Biekers."
The librarian nodded. "The Biebers are all in northern Ellis County and Bellamy County."
Garreth wrote the Bieber addresses in his notebook, then looked up the address of the high school. "I take it the Biebers were in another of those Volga German groups settling here?"
Her brows went up again. "You know the history. No, the Biebers used to be Biekers living around Schoenchen. Then about 1900, Anton Bieker had some bitter disagreement with his father and took his wife and children, all thirteen of them, and moved north and changed his name. If it isn't prying, why are you looking for Biebers?"
He gave her his story.
She listened with interest. "So you think this Maggie Bieber can help you find your grandmother?"
"Or at least tell me if Mary Pfeifer is really her name."
"There are Pfeifers in Bellamy, too...the county seat. You ought to check there as well."
To maintain his cover story, he went through the Bellamy directory and took down Pfeifer addresses. Not entirely an empty exercise. Bellamy had eight Biebers, as well.
Would he get lucky in Bellamy County, he wondered as he left the library. Tomorrow would see.
Meanwhile, what could he do the rest of the night besides pace and speculate about tomorrow. Go to a movie? Return of the Jedi was playing at the local theater, he noticed. While he had seen it earlier in the year, filling another empty evening without Marti, it was escapist watching --- except for the bullshit with Darth Vader at the end where they got sentimental over him being Luke's father and seemed to forget about all the mayhem and deaths he was responsible for --- so he might as well watch it again.
The movie had not even started, however, when he discovered a problem with theaters and vampires. If this were a weekend crowd, blood smell would have swamped him. Sitting in the empty rear row with a box of extra-butter popcorn under his nose helped mask the scents from tonight's handful of patrons. Except for one scent with an acidity that reminded him of the hospital and kept distracting him. A part of Garreth wanted to find the source...ask if he/she were ill...urge the individual to see a doctor. Instead he left, reflecting that if a disease altered blood scent a particular way, a vampire doctor would make one hell of a diagnostician
In the parking lot he regarded the long night ahead and almost missed his Embarcadero forays.
Thought of which prompted a question he needed to address. While he still had half the blood he brought with him, when that ran out, what did Kansas offer for refills? Jackrabbits and prairie dogs? Considering the size of the prairie, finding enough of those struck him as chancy. Rats, though, lived everywhere. Where here? Barns, probably, and maybe grain elevators.
Hays had a big one. Sitting in the middle of town, unfortunately, where unfamiliarity with its interior structure and possible location of his prey in it outweighed confidence in his stealth. Blunder around enough and he was bound to be noticed. He needed an isolated elevator...like the one in dead little Dixon. Maybe the county had a Dixon counterpart somewhere close.
North of town, the highway followed rolling hills. At the crest of each, Garreth scanned the horizon for the elevator shape. Concentrating on that, he caught sight of the moving shadows in a field off to the side barely in time to brake and avoid a deer and two nearly-grown fawns as they crossed in front of him.
Deer. He turned in at a pasture gate and climbed out to stare after the animals. Deer had more blood than a rat...enough to give him some without having to die? If he could catch one. Watching these vanish over the hill, he calculated the odds of that as slim to none. But what more might be in the field. The night wind brought him a warm scent of something blood-filled. Cattle, maybe. Cattle had even more blood and should be easier to catch.
He climbed over the metal pipe gate and followed the blood scent across the pasture. Catching up with prey, he realized, did not equal control of it. Would his power work for something so much bigger than a rat?
A hell of a lot bigger than a rat. Coming over the rise brought him face to face with not cattle but a single bovine, looming huge as a elephant and pale as a ghost in the twilight brightness of his vision...with huge testicles between its hind legs announcing he confronted a bull.
Garreth froze. The bull snorted in surprise.
Doubts raced through his head. Not just about the ability to stare into the eyes when they were on the sides of its head, but assuming he managed that, could he find a vein? That was one hell of a thick neck.
The bull snorted again and lowered its head. He needed to act or retreat. Garreth licked his lips and wiped sweaty palms on his jeans. Moving enough to catch one of the cow's eyes, he focused on it. Would one eye work?
Maybe. The massive head stayed down, but seemed more relaxed. The flare of its nostrils eased.
Now what? Would it stay docile if he looked away to go for the neck? Lane had to do that to bite him, but continued controlling him with her voice. Would that work with an animal? Only one way to find out.
Still staring it in the eye, he eased closer and pushed at its neck...braced to run like hell if necessary. The hair felt warm, soft, and curly under his fingers. "Lie down," he said, making his voice low and soothing.
It rocked a little. He pushed harder. Its legs sagged, forelegs folding first, followed by the hind ones. Its nose dropped to its front legs.
Garreth moved closer and pushed some more. "Roll over. Lie flat."
With a sigh, the bull did so.
Garreth felt an urge to sigh, too, in relief. Except now he had to look away. Murmuring soothingly, Garreth knelt and moved his hand up the neck into a hollow behind the jaw. He probed, searching for a pulse...found it, beating strong and slow. Keeping the fingers of one hand on it, he knelt, bent over the outstretched neck and, extending his fangs, and bit where his fingers touched.
And found only flesh and the barest taste of blood.
Not again! He wanted to scream in frustration.
The bull twitched. Garreth fought panic. The pulse throbbed under his fingers. He smelled blood under the pale hide. It had to be in there somewhere. He made himself try again, biting in a slightly different position.
This time blood spurted. The twin gushers filled his mouth. After his usual refrigerated diet, its heat startled him and he nearly jumped back. But the hunger ignited by the hot flow quickly overcame surprise. He hung on, drinking his fill.
His fill, but as with the rat blood, not to satisfaction. He sat back, holding thumbs over the punctures with frustration snarling in him. Blood was blood. Why was this not good enough?
The bull lay still, its eyes closed. Garreth removed his thumbs. The punctures had stopped seeping blood. A handful of earth rubbed into the hide covered the marks.
When he stood the bull rolled onto its chest, but made no attempt to stand, just lay with its eyes closed. Still, he backed away keeping his eyes on it. He did not turn until over the hill, then, once out of sight, he ran...partially to put distance between himself and the huge animal, partly in a vain attempt to run away from the longings racking him.
But enjoyment came, too, in the nighttime strength and energy clamoring for release. The ground streamed beneath his feet as power surged through him. Soon exhilaration drowned all other thoughts and he gave himself up to the unthinking joy of motion. He had never run this fast before! The gate lay ahead and instead of stopping to crawl through, he hurdled it.
Landing beside the car, he discovered that his heart and breathing returned to normal in seconds. He grinned. At this rate, he could run for miles without even trying. What a kick!
A spotlight lit him up.
He froze in its glare, throwing up an arm to shield his eyes. The action came reflexively but even as his forearm rose, Garreth realized it served another purpose as well, to keep the person behind the light from seeing his eyes reflect red.
A car door opened.
The spotlight prevented him from seeing who climbed out, but the very fact of a spotlight suggested law enforcement. He lowered his arm enough to peer over it and identify a light bar on top of the car. Which might or might not be good, remembering times on patrol with a few partners before Harry. Too bad he had no badge on him.
"Evening, son," a voice said from behind the light.
The casual tone of the greeting gave him hope of a friendly encounter. "Good evening, Officer."
"Deputy sheriff," the voice corrected him. "What's your name?"
"Garreth Mikaelian. My driver's license is in my hip pocket. Would you like to see it?"
"If you don't mind."
As Garreth fished out his billfold and extracted the license, the deputy said, "You have California plates. You a student at the college?"
Yes, there was a college here. He debated his answer and chose honesty. "No, just passing through. I'm staying at the Holiday Inn."
"What are you doing way out here?"
What answer would the deputy accept? What would he accept if their positions were reversed? "I'm a night person and your town goes to sleep before I do. So I took a drive. This is a spectacular sky. I don't see anything like it in San Francisco."
"Don't you see No Trespassing signs out there?" He pointed to the one wired to the fence beside the gate.
Okay, maybe this was turning not so friendly and good thing he had not shown a badge and made himself look more irresponsible. Garreth gave the deputy a sheepish grimace. "I saw the sign but I wasn't going to do anything but walk to the top of the hill and back. Which I did." Would it help to come across as an ignorant city boy? "I didn't even bother the cow that's sleeping on the other side of the hill."
"Cow?" The deputy laughed shortly. "The Good Lord looks after fools. Son, that 'cow' is Vale's Chablis of Postrock, Postrock ranch's prize Charolais show bull...or he was until he got too mean to handle."
Garreth swallowed. "Mean?"
"He's put three men in the hospital, one of them crippled for life. You could have paid for trespassing with your life." The deputy returned the driver's license. "Suppose you go on back to town and stay out of pastures, especially when they're posted."
Garreth went, shaking in retrospective fear.
By the time he reached the hotel, that had been replaced by exhilaration. Though ignorant of the risk he took, he controlled the bull...which should mean no trouble with less dangerous cattle. Giving him a plentiful source of blood which did not have to die feeding him. He needed a better excuse for nocturnal activity, though. The next deputy might be less friendly.
Jogging suggested itself. Everyone ran these days and he enjoyed the one tonight. Before he headed to Baumen tomorrow, he would buy a pair of running shoes and a warm-up suit to lend his story credence. But maybe exercise more caution, too, in his choice of cattle to fed on.
13
Driving east from Hays on I-70 then north through Bellamy to Baumen, Garreth focused of being positive. Baumen had Biebers. Lane was going to be one of them, or at least whoever wrote to her was. Entering the town trying to feel vibes of her past presence, his thought became an astonished observation that their main street, Kansas Avenue, was wider than the Embarcadero. Almost as wide as their shopping district was long. Railroad tracks stretched north up the middle, flanked by two traffic lanes and diagonal parking on each side.
He crossed the tracks onto Pine Street, noting automatically that City Hall occupied the next block west of Kansas, surrounded by the fire station behind it to the south and police department on the west. But when the high school appeared on down the street, his focus snapped back to Lane. Would he find her here or not.
As in Pfeifer, a secretary in the principal's office led him to the library and handed him over to the librarian, Miss Mary Schumacher, a lean, brisk woman in her sixties. When he gave her his story, she showed him the yearbook shelf at the rear of the stacks, brought in a chair for him, and left him to his reading.
He started with 1930, when Lane would have been fourteen and a freshman, assuming she gave her correct birth date when arrested. Mental fingers crossed, he turned to the freshmen. His pulse jumped at the name Bieber under three pictures...only to slow in disappointment when neither of the two girls were named Madelaine and despite the small size of the pictures, clearly bore no resemblance to Lane. The sophomores and juniors also had small pictures...with only a male Bieber in the sophomore class and none in the junior class, or among the eleven seniors, who each had nice large pictures.
Well, detective work always meant plowing doggedly on.
He reached for the 1931 yearbook and stopped. No, he might as well go for broke, and the big senior pictures. He pulled out the '33 year book. Still, to be thorough, he checked each class, in case she were younger than she claimed, or had been held back. Fifteen freshmen, no Lane. Not among the thirteen sophomores or thirteen juniors, either.
Garreth turned the page to the senior class.
Lane stared up at him from the first picture...unsmiling, eyes boring into the camera with such challenge it felt like a physical blow. Cold and anger rushed through him. The maiden is powerful.
Did he say it aloud? Behind her desk, Miss Schumacher turned to look at him. He bent his head over the yearbook with Grandma Doyle's photograph, as though comparing it to those in the book, and presently went on to the '34 yearbook, and the rest up to 1937 before sitting back with a sigh.
Miss Schumacher came into the stacks. "I take it you didn't find Mary?"
He shook his head. "The trouble is, while I always thought Mary Pfeifer might not be her real name --- if I were pregnant out of wedlock in those days, I wouldn't use my real name --- now it occurs to me there's no way to know if she's really in this picture." He held it up. "We assumed she is because of her name on the back, but we didn't have Grandma to tell us if this Mary is Mary Pfeifer. After all, how many girls were named Mary back then, including you."
"Have you checked in Bellamy yet?"
"No, but I will." He toyed with the photograph. "I'm thinking now that the person I really need to find is a girl who according to my grandmother's diary, visited Mary once. She told my grandmother her name was Maggie Bieber, and since she knew where Mary was, and maybe was the one who wrote to her, I'm thinking they must have been friends and gone to school together."
Miss Schumacher frowned. "I don't know any Maggie Bieber. I was in school with a Madelaine Bieber, but we called her Mada. She graduated a year ahead of me in '33 and I don't think she had any friends."
Someone who knew Lane! Garreth gave her all his attention to encourage her to talk. "Why no friends?"
"She had a temper as fiery as her hair. Say one word she didn't like and she'd be at the person with tooth and claw...boys as well as girls."
That sounded like the Lane who tried biting Claudia's ear off. Could any of those teachers still be alive to appreciate how well Lane had learned to control her temper?
"Looking back, we didn't help." Miss Schumacher sighed. "She was big and gawky, easy to provoke...and teenagers can be so cruel."
"You can't think of a single friends she had?"
"Not in high school. Maybe in college. I don't know how or why, maybe because she was smart as a whip, even though it was the Depression her father scraped together tuition for Fort Hays. But she was only there one semester before running off with some professor. To Europe, the story was. It was quite a scandal. He abandoned a wife and children."
Europe. Where someone brought her over? Europe seemed like vampire country. Maybe her story about escaping ahead of Hitler's storm troopers was the truth. "What happened to her after that?"
"I don't know. She never came back here. But you might ask her mother."
Electricity shot through him. "Her mother is living? Here in Baumen?" Maybe the letter writer?
"Oh, yes, Anna Bieber. Just a minute." She left for her desk.
Garreth watched her open a phone book. ..even as he checked his notes. He had an Anna Bieber at 513 Pine...just down the street from here.
Miss Schumacher came back with a slip of paper and the same address. "I hope this helps you."
So do I, ma'am; so do I.
The hope that carried him to Anna Bieber's house lightened even the pressure of daylight.
The fire leaping out as he neared the door burned just as hot, however. He knocked and retreated a step to ease it.
A middle-aged woman answered the door. Not Lane's mother, obviously. Maybe a sister, though he saw no resemblance.
"I'm looking for Mrs. Anna Bieber," he said.
The woman opened the door. "Come in. I'll get Mother."
The fire vanished. He followed her inside.
Mrs. Bieber turned out to be a petite woman with white hair pulled back in a neat bun, nothing like the strapping woman Garreth expected to spawn an amazon like Lane. Though she moved slowly, she still walked straight, and her eyes met Garreth's directly, undimmed.
For a moment, the similarity to his own grandmother seemed so strong, panic fluttered in him, wondering if she, too, possibly recognized him for what he was. But her hand never touched the crucifix around her neck or glanced toward the one hanging on the livingroom wall. She cordially invited him to sit down.
At the end of listening to his story, she looked him over with searching eyes. "You think my daughter Mada was friends with the mother of your father? May I see the photograph?"
Garreth handed it over.
After studying it for several minutes, she returned it, shaking her head. "I'm sorry. I don't recognize any of those girls. I don't know when Mada would have visited your grandmother's house. She ran away to Europe in 1934."
He gave her a shrug. "I needed to ask. Did your daughter ever come home again?"
"Not really, but Mada calls every week, no matter where she is." The old woman beamed. "She's a singer and travels all over, even to Mexico and Canada and Japan. I'd be satisfied with a letter --- calling must be terribly expensive --- but she says she enjoys hearing my voice."
His breath caught. Jackpot! Now if he could learn where she called from most recently. "She calls every week? How lucky you are. Do you have a number for her? I'd like to call and ask her if she knows Mary and where she is or what happened to her."
"I'm sorry. She never leaves a number...but I can ask her myself the next time she calls."
The last thing he wanted! He made himself smile. "No, that's fine. Don't bother."
"Then why don't I give you my number and you call at Thanksgiving and ask her yourself."
He caught his breath. "She'll be here at Thanksgiving?"
"Or at Christmas. She always comes home for one of the holidays," she said with satisfaction.
Garreth mentally pumped a fist. Yes! Lane came home. Lady Luck was a darling. Instead of running around the world looking for her, all he had to do was wait...let the fugitive come to him.
Spider Game
1
Wait for Lane. It sounded ideal but driving back to Hays, the exhilaration of being almost in capture distance faded. Reality set in. How could he wait? He needed to go home and face the review board if he wanted his badge back. Around the end of the week his father and mother would be expecting him home from the fictional hunting trip. He needed to get straight with Harry, too.
Brutal honesty said waiting for Lane was the worst possible course of action...an outsider sitting around in a town of what, two or three thousand for several months, arousing curiosity and maybe suspicion. Anna Bieber was bound to mention it to Lane in one of their phone calls and Lane would see right through the story, then never show up. He ought to just pass on his information to Serruto, even though Serruto would blow his top at what he had been doing, and let Serruto contact the local police, who could be waiting for Lane when she showed up.
There his reasoning stumbled. How could he ask the locals to arrest her. They had no idea what they were dealing with and if he tried to warn them, at best they would lock him in a padded cell.
How, though, could he justify to the department, friends, and family pretty much vanishing for several months. If he let them know where he was, they might interfere. What did he live on, since he could not, in good conscience, keep taking paychecks from the SFPD. Most of all, how could he plant himself here in reasonable inconspicuousness.
With no answers, back at the motel he nevertheless called Homicide. The coast being two hours earlier than here, Serruto should still be there.
He was...and sounded solicitous until Garreth said, "I can't come back yet, and maybe just ought to resign like I wanted to originally. Because I'm thinking no one will ever trust me to back them up again. I'll always be the guy who went wacko and got Harry shot."
More significantly, how could he tolerate working days? The very thought exhausted him.
An exasperated hiss came over the line. "You're becoming a major hemorrhoid, Mikaelian. Look, if you're worried about the review board, I don't see them being too harsh with you. After all, they know you were --- "
"Non compos mentis?"
"Under unusual stress, I was going to say," Serruto said dryly. "Of course it would be better if you hadn't strong-armed your way out of the hospital, but I'm thinking you'll just have to spend a lot of time with the shrink before you come back."
"I need more than that."
"Like I said, you're a major hemorrhoid, but..." He sighed. "...I didn't wake up on that slab. Don't resign yet. I'll see about setting you up a leave of absence."
"Without pay." Though his gut knotted at the thought.
Another sigh. "How long do you want?"
"Until the end of the year." By which time, with any luck, he would have nailed Lane and removed himself from this unwanted life.
2
With inconspicuousness being impossible, he decided to turn conspicuousness into an asset. Let everyone know his business. Once they did and satisfied their curiosity, with luck they would begin overlooking him the same way socks in the bedroom chair became invisible if you left them long enough. So shortly after dawn, he replenished the ice in his ice chest, checked out of his motel, and headed for Baumen.
Yesterday he spotted a hotel as he came into town, the Driscoll...a three-story building on the west side of Kansas Avenue, built of buff colored sandstone, like almost all the buildings downtown here. He had been noticing that stone everywhere: in houses, Baumen's City Hall, the high school, some barns, even fence posts. It looked nice, he thought, not just the earthy color but the way it gave human habitation an appearance of growing from the prairie around it.
Inside, the Driscoll's decor looked aged but like a favorite sweatshirt or jeans...oak pillars, a braided rug in the sitting area over a plank floor, leather chairs with the patina of soft old leather jackets, vases of bright fall flowers on side tables and the front desk. He guessed the rooms would be small...but cheap, Garreth hoped. The main reason he had by-passed the modern motel south of town.
At the front desk the clerk greeted him cheerfully...plump, approaching middle age, wearing a name tag engraved Violet Showalter. "Check in time is normally noon, but we have rooms ready for occupancy right now, so go ahead and register. I can even give you a room that opens onto one of the balconies out front."
Facing the rising sun? He politely declined, then while signing in, told her all about his search for family. The way she hung on every word and prodded him for more information made him confident she would soon have the story spread around town.
His second floor room with its north-facing window --- looking at the wall of the movie theater beyond the Chamber of Commerce next door --- was cheap as he hoped, and smaller than he anticipated. Barely large enough for the bed, desk and chair, chest of drawers that also held the television, and a small arm chair and reading lamp. It had sacrificed size in some past remodel for the private bath Violet proudly touted for every room. Yet while small, the spotless bathroom and bedroom felt comfortable with themselves, like the lobby downstairs...unpretentious, I-am-what-I-am. More akin to a bed and breakfast than a hotel.
Violet did eye his ice chest warily. At the Holiday Inn he kept the chest in his car, but there the vehicle had been anonymous. Not here, parked on the street with his California plates conspicuous among the Kansas ones.
"What do you have there?"
She sounded suspicious, so he forced himself to open the chest, and even pull out a jug and unscrew the lid while giving her the protein drink story. Trying to keep cooler than he had been with Lien. People are curious about things someone seems reluctant to show or talk about, he reminded himself.
"Would you like to try some? It looks and smells weird but it's very healthy." Playing to the perception some people had of California as la-la land, he added, "All organic and natural ingredients. A holistic dietitian back home developed the formula." He held the open top toward her.
She had already pulled back at organic and holistic. Now she put on a polite smile. "It's kind of you to offer, but no thank you. When you need more ice, the Conoco convenience store has it."
To avoid housekeeper curiosity, he shoved the chest under the bed with his suitcase and the rolled air mattress pallet in front of it.
The pallet he fingered longingly first. Daylight felt so much heavier today without the leavening of the hunt to make it bearable. How wonderful it would be forget the pretense of hunting ancestors and go comatose until sunset woke him.
After consideration, he wondered why not? As long as he spent the day away, people would assume he was hunting grandma. He just needed somewhere suitable to go to earth, as it were.
"Good luck," Violet called as he passed the desk on the way out.
When he came back in the evening she greeted him with another smile. "You found your grandmother?"
He had been right about her assumption. Then the content of her question registered. Garreth blinked. "What makes you think that?"
"You look so pleased with yourself."
Because he felt better than he had in days...even sleeping just three hours in the hideaway he spent most of the day hunting. Nothing like Dracula's Carfax Abbey but appropriate to this part of the country, he thought, a barn behind the burned ruin of a farm house...roof falling in, leaning enough to keep people out. It seemed stable enough, though, when he pushed on its walls and support posts inside, and it felt and smelled wonderfully of earth. The shadows inside hid the car, and in deeper shadows yet where he spread a blanket from the car, he had stretched out and given himself to that earth.
The Garreth he played, though, would have another reason for his pleasure, which he would readily share. "I didn't exactly find her, but a Mrs. Reed at the high school in Bellamy thinks she recognizes this girl." He laid his photograph on the desk and pointed to a girl beside Grandma Doyle. "If she's right, the name isn't Mary Pfeifer --- what I was afraid of --- but Elizabeth something, maybe Pfannenstiel, and she lived in Trubel or on a farm around it." He fought a temptation to embroider with gossip about a girl running off with an itinerant farm worker. Suspects tripped themselves up that way, talking too much. Did Kansas even have itinerant farm workers? Keep it simple, man, with room to change the story if you have to. "So tomorrow I'm headed for Trubel. Tonight," he added, "I think I'll change into a running suit and go jogging."
"There's a nice trail in Pioneer Park," Violet said. "Go north past the stock pens. The park entrance is on the left before you cross the river."
With his interest being blood, not exercise, he set off with an empty bottle hidden in his jacket and stayed on Kansas Avenue after it narrowed to two lanes on the west side of the railroad tracks, passed the railroad station and the stock pens Violet mentioned, then crossed the Saline River and became Country Road 16. The countryside, which had dropped from the plateau Bellamy sat on into the river valley around Baumen, rose again to rolling hills, pastureland lit by the waxing moon and divided by barb wire fences.
He kept following the highway, jogging leisurely, noting the location of farm houses and sections where cattle grazed...square-built beef, black or red-and-white. The number pleased him...cattle enough to avoid preying on one group too much.
After what he judged to be four or five miles, he stopped to catch his breath, then started back. At a pasture dotted with red-and-white cattle and no farm houses visible, Garreth checked up and down the highway for headlights that might be patrolling sheriff deputies. None showed so he vaulted the metal gate. Keeping the other night's bull in mind, he approached a trio of animals with caution, though all were smaller than the Charolais. They lifted their heads and regarded him placidly. After a few moments, two returned to grazing. The third ambled toward him.
Garreth grinned. A volunteer. How convenient. "Hi there, fellow."
Like the bull, the steer obediently lay down for him, and this time he hit the vein first try. After drinking a little to make sure he had a good stick, he sat back holding a finger over one puncture, letting the other continue bleeding, filling his bottle --- pre-treated with anticoagulant.
He watched with satisfaction. Okay, this worked. He had his blood supply secured.
Then one of the other steers snorted. Garreth tensed, ready to jump up and run...but the steer stared at something behind him. He looked around to see a pair of glowing eyes some twenty or so feet away.
The animal looked like a scrawny German Shepherd. A coyote?
The creature eyed him and the supine cow. Did coyotes attack cattle? Garreth waved an arm at it. "Get out of here. Scram!"
The coyote stayed put, eyes gleaming. Garreth stared back, holding the animal's gaze while he capped the bottle, the puncture quit bleeding, and the steer had safely regained its feet. Only then did he turn away, and after giving the steer a pat of thanks, headed back for town.
With another jolt of alarm he found the coyote following about ten feet off to the side. Son of a bitch. Was there always going to be something threatening him out here? He turned to face the coyote, braced for an attack, but it came no closer...just resumed following when he finally continued on toward town. Garreth broke into a run and so did the coyote. It paced him like a shadow. Not a threat, he decided finally. The cock of its ears looked more like curiosity. Puzzled by Garreth's not-quite-human scent? He relaxed.
The coyote stayed with him most of the way to town, until Garreth vaulted the fence onto the country road. Then it faded into the darkness of the prairie. Garreth jogged on into town alone.
After he crossed the bridge, a car came out of a road following the river and over the tracks to fall in behind him. Glancing over his shoulder, he identified a light bar and stuck up a hand in greeting.
The engine revved. A tan Crown Vic with POLICE on the door shot past and swung across his path to a tire-screeching halt.
"In a hurry to go somewhere, friend?"
A question without a trace of friendliness in it. Damn! And he carried a bottle of blood. "I'm just jogging." Garreth knelt unhurriedly, as though to check a shoe, and slid the bottle from under his jacket into brush growing along the railroad right of way.
"In the middle of the night? Sure. Stand up and come over here! Put your hands on the car and spread your feet!"
Arrogant sounding son of a bitch. Angrily, Garreth spread-eagled against the car.
Moving up behind Garreth, the cop began frisking him, a cloying sweetness of aftershave almost masking the blood scent. Garreth also noted biceps straining at the tan shirt, knife creases in dark brown trousers, and a gear belt with a mirror shine.
"You do this like someone with lots of experience at it, friend."
Which was more than could be said for Barney Fife here...never asking whether he had anything sharp or dangerous in his pockets, no hand on Garreth's back to keep him against the car or detect the tension of someone about to move. The clown ran hands down both sides of him at once, then leaned down to check his legs with both hands...a perfect target for a kick backward, or a knee in his face if Garreth spun around. Any scumbag back home would have him on the ground in seconds, despite the bulging biceps. The frisk missed half the places a weapon might be hidden, too.
"You don't carry identification?" Asked as if it were a felony.
Garreth kept his voice polite. "It's back in my room at the Driscoll, but the name is Garreth Mikaelian."
"Oh...that kid from California."
The officer stepped back and let him turn around. The name tag on Barney's shirt read: Duncan, and Garreth noticed Duncan bore a faint resemblance to Robert Redford. From the way the cop wore his hair, he thought so, too, and wanted to enhance the likeness.
"Sorry about the frisk." Not sounding at all apologetic. "But you got to understand we can't be too careful with strangers. There's a lot of drug traffic through the state."
Garreth understood Duncan had probably been bored out of his skull and used the first opportunity to create some activity. He resented being used for it.
The car radio sputtered. Duncan climbed in and picked up the mike. "Big number Five here as always, doll. What do you need?" He had the car rolling away even before listening to the response.
Garreth let him pass the railroad station before retrieving the blood. That had been close. He would have to be more careful in the future. Though it gave him a hollow feeling thinking of fellow officers as "them" rather than "us" and made the next two months look miserable. All this could not be over soon enough.
3
Being able to sleep most of the day felt so good that being dragged awake a couple of hours before sunset by the alarm clock he took with him did not feel as annoying as it might have. Six o'clock seemed the reasonable time he would return if he were who he pretended to be. It almost took effort to wear a no-luck-today face back to the hotel.
Behind the desk, Violet sighed. "So that girl wasn't your Mary?"
She had looked so hopeful as he came in, then crestfallen, that his conscience twitched for lying to her and prompted him to soften her disappointment. "I don't know if they didn't recognize her or it's a case of 'She dishonored this family so she's dead to us.'"
Violet sniffed. "Yes, that's the attitude some family patriarchs around here take. Don't don't let them put you off. Keep asking around."
Garreth had to smile. "Thanks for the encouragement." He glanced back toward the door. "There's more traffic tonight than last night."
She nodded. "It's Thursday."
"Thursday is special?"
"Oh, of course you wouldn't know," she said. "The stores stay open late, until ten."
A whole different idea of late from San Francisco.
"A lot of families do their weekly shopping, farmers and when both parents work days."
That made sense, and more than one night a week was probably not profitable with a population this size.
He strolled to the front window and stared out at the parked cars and pickups. Lots of pickups, many with stock racks. Parking spaces at the curb and along the tracks on both sides of the street had seemed overkill last night and the day he visited the high school. No longer.
"If you think there's traffic now," Violent said, "wait until tomorrow and Saturday night. The teenagers from town and the farms all come downtown and cruise Kansas...driving up one side and back down the other half the night."
Kids really did that?
It might make tomorrow entertaining , a live American Graffiti. Right now, well rested and wide awake, with no need for more blood, the evening looked good for working on making himself a familiar enough figure to become part of the landscape. The question was finding the place to start?
"Violet, where in town can I play pool?"
Despite having learned the game under the lash of Grandpa Mikaelian's tongue and the occasional crack of a cue across his knuckles, he enjoyed pool. A few games with locals would introduce him and might make some acquaintances. If he were careful not to win too often or too decisively.
"There are a couple of tables at the bowling alley --- it's east of town on 282 --- but I wouldn't go there. When my women's league bowls, I see mostly kids and teenagers and they're always cutting up and trying to push players into finishing their game so they can play. If my husband wasn't in Hays tonight, I'd have him take you to the VFW. It and the American Legion both have game rooms."
So, no pool tonight. What about the restaurant on the far side of the street? Garreth pictured himself telling his story to a chatty waitress and other customers. "What's the Main Street Café like?"
"Wonderful," Violet began, then hesitated. "If you like home-style cooking. Their fried chicken and meatloaf are as good as my mother's and you can't beat their homemade pies and sourdough bread. The starter for the bread came west with Verl's great-great-grandmother in the 1880's. But the Pioneer Grill down the street is where to go for barbeque, Chinese, and Italian food."
Yes...he thought he caught the whiff of garlic as he headed out of town last night. "Home-style sounds good to me."
Once in the Main Street, however, he saw no chance to chat up a waitress. They had just one... attractive, about his age, sweaty tendrils of hair escaping from her topknot as she rushed between their eight tables.
No one sat at the counter. He took one of those seats, and waved her off when she glanced his direction. "I'm in no hurry."
She sent him a grateful smile as she hurried past behind the counter to put up another order and spin the wheel into the kitchen. "I swear I'm going to kill Irene!" she snarled at someone in the kitchen visible only as a male head wearing a white cap. "Of all the nights not to show up!"
"Stand in line," the head said. "I'm killing her first."
The waitress turned --- Sharon, according to her name tag --- and forced a smile. "Can I get you coffee?"
There were more ways than one to become less a stranger. "Since the people at that table are leaving and I see an order going up on the counter, how about getting me one of the tubs you use for dirty dishes and let me clear their table for you. Save you one job."
She stared at him. "You want to bus the table? Why?"
He gave her a hopefully winning smile. "Because I'm a nice guy with nothing better to do and you're a maiden in distress."
She stared a moment longer, then spun away to call into the kitchen, "Verl!" After a whispered conference over the counter with the head, and a hard stare at him by the head, she said, "Come around this way." and led him into an alcove with a three-shelf cart of plastic tubs and more on a shelf under a counter. "Just bring everything back here and pile up the tubs."
So he tied the apron she gave him over his t-shirt and jeans and bussed tables, handing Sharon the tips. Then he helped carry orders to tables Sharon pointed out. In passing snatches, he managed to chat her up after all...introducing himself, learning her full name, Sharon Haas; the head's last name, Hamilton; their hours this evening, until ten-thirty.
"You're such a sweetie to do this."
"Well I didn't want to see you wig out and attack customers with the silverware."
Which made her laugh.
"I guess people come in to eat when they do their shopping?"
"Yes, some before, some after," she said. "Verl says Violet Showalter says you're looking for your grandmother's family that you didn't know you had."
"Yes." Good going, Violet.
Most of the customers were couples or families, so the single male who came in about seven-thirty immediately caught Garreth's attention. Attention that sharpened when the man sat at the counter with his back to the counter and stared at Sharon with an intensity that turned his handsome face threatening. And clearly made Sharon uncomfortable.
Verl came out of the kitchen, turning from a head into a stocky man in his fifties. He leaned across the counter toward the starer and in a low voice said, "Wayne, you're not welcome here."
Wayne never took his eyes from Sharon, just flexed shoulders that looked built by tossing hay bales. "So throw me out!"
Nearer diners looked around. At a corner table, a man in police uniform, minus gun and gear belt, started to stand.
Garreth had seen him come in earlier with a woman and two boys about eight or nine. Long, lanky...someone easy to picture leading a posse on horseback rather than steering a patrol car. Now Garreth pictured the disruption as the cop tried to strong-arm Wayne out the door, or maybe flatten him over the counter.
Garreth stepped into Wayne's line of vision and leaned down to stare him in the eyes. Barely above a whisper, he said, "Wayne...leave. Now. Quietly. Don't...come...back."
Wayne's expression went briefly baffled, then blank. He stood and when Garreth moved aside, turned and strode out.
While diners returned to their food and the cop sat back down, Verl stared after Wayne in astonishment. "I'll be damned. What did you say to him? I couldn't hear."
Garreth shrugged. "I politely asked him to leave is all. What's the story?"
Verl grunted. "Ex-boyfriend of Sharon's who won't accept being ex."
Sharon rushed over to squeeze Garreth's arm. "Thank you so much! I can't believe he left that way. He can be mean as a snake."
Good god, another Vale of Chablis. Though he had dealt with plenty of Wayne's ilk on domestic disturbance calls in San Francisco, Mayberry here ought to be more peaceful.
The next table he cleared sat next to the cop's. Whose name tag read Toews.
"Nice going with Hepner," Toews said. "He's not usually that cooperative. How'd you manage it?"
"Is everything all right, sir?" Garreth said. "Can we get you anything else? More coffee?"
"Thank you, we're fine," the woman said. "I think we're about ready to leave."
They did shortly, but Garreth noticed the cop spent longer than seemed necessary at the register paying his bill, and Sharon glanced Garreth's way a time or two as she counted out change.
Garreth refrained from asking her about the obvious discussion of him. What could she say except give him the story Violet had passed on. He kept working.
A last few patrons straggled in around ten, but all had left by quarter to eleven. Verl locked the door and flipped the sign to Closed. Garreth cleared and wiped the last of the tables while Sharon ran a vacuum under the tables, then he got out the mop and wheeled bucket he had seen in the alcove and started mopping the floor.
"You don't have to do that," Sharon said.
Garreth shrugged. "Might as well. You go ahead and count up your tickets or whatever you need to do."
From the kitchen, Verl said, "You never got a chance to order anything. What would you like before I shut off everything? It's on the house."
Garreth shook his head. "I'm fine. I caught a bite in Bellamy and came in here mostly to be around people."
He finished mopping by going over the kitchen floor, too, with Verl watching him thoughtfully.
As he put away the mop and pail, Verl said, "I can't thank you enough for jumping to help this way. Or for taking care of Wayne." He paused. "Would you like a job?" Before Garreth answered he hurried on, "I know you're not going to be around for long, but I only need someone temporary, until I can replace Irene."
The good deed rewarded. Garreth pretended to be considering. He estimated another week as the limit he could reasonably drag out the family hunt. After that he needed another excuse for hanging around. A temporary job could always become more if he worked it right. Though working this one night had shown him the job would be boring. "I can use the money. Is it possible to leave at least part of the day free for my family hunt?"
Verl smiled. "That's no problem. Come in tomorrow at four."
Sharon looked up and waved --- "Thanks again about Wayne." --- as Verl unlocked the front door long enough to let him out.
The street now looked the way it had last night, all the cars and trucks gone except for some in front of a bar in the next block and more farther up at, if he remembered right, the VFW hall.
And a police car parked beside the ZX in front of the hotel, the lanky cop sitting against the car's trunk, arms folded, cap shoved back on his head.
Uneasiness prickling Garreth. The guy was obviously waiting for him. Why?
He crossed the street warily. "Good evening, Officer."
"Sergeant, actually, but call me Nat." He stood and extended a hand. "I never introduced myself earlier. Nathan Toews." He pronounced it Taves in spite of the spelling on his name tag.
Reluctantly, Garreth shook the offered hand. "Garreth Mikaelian."
"Sharon told me. You're hunting family roots, she says. Any luck so far?"
A casual question, but Garreth had started too many field interviews the same way not to regard it with suspicion. What was up? "A little."
Toews sat back and folded his arms again. "I ran your plates."
Anger hissed in Garreth. Despite the seeming friendliness, he had another Barney Fife rousting an outsider! He forced a bland expression and voice. "Why?"
Toews shrugged. "It's hard not to be curious about someone who's gabbing away with everyone about this search for his ancestors but freezes up the moment I ask a cop to cop kind of question."
Garreth said nothing. The plates gave Toews only the name and address on the registration. So there had to be more here. He waited for the other shoe to drop.
After pausing, Toews said, "I thought from your address you might be SFPD so I called a friend of a friend out there."
Thump, there it fell. Now the bozo knew all about him. At least it had not been an official inquiry. "But that hasn't satisfied your curiosity?" Too late he heard the angry edge on his voice.
Toews raised his brows. "Not that it's any of my business --- that I know of --- but I can't help wondering why you're here instead of there defending your badge."
Garreth's uneasiness sharpened. Had the friend of a friend mentioned the name Bieber in relation to the attack on him? If so, Toews could not fail to connect it to the visit he paid Anna Bieber, word of which had surely gotten around. Even if Toews knew only the basic story of the assault, the morgue, and Harry's shooting, it made the family search sound incredibly lame as his the sole reason for coming here. And brushing Toews off with yes, it's none of your business would only arouse more curiosity.
Half a truth might satisfy him. "I'm not sure I want the badge anymore. Would you trust me to back you up? I wouldn't."
That seemed to leave Toews at a loss. He regarded Garreth wordlessly for a several moments, then pushed erect, sighing. "I --- " His gaze jumped past Garreth. "Son of a bitch!" He whirled away toward his driver's door.
"What --- " Garreth began.
Toews jumped in the patrol car. "Wayne Hepner's truck just turned into the alley behind the Main Street!"
The car screeched into reverse, barely giving Garreth time to jump out of the way, and whipped forward in a tight turn, gunning for the railroad crossing.
Garreth pounded after him.
A woman screamed. Sharon!
He charged into full speed...not caring if Toews saw him passing and swinging into the alley ahead of the patrol car. Though he doubted Toews noticed as his headlights lit up the pickup halfway down the alley, chasing Sharon.
She had the sense to stay close to the wall, where the truck could not run her down without losing the side mirror set out on a wide bracket. Except running offered no escape.
Toews' light bar flashed on and the siren burped three times.
The pickup only speeded up...and to Garreth's horror, as it overtook Sharon, Wayne swung open his door. It smashed into Sharon, sending her flying forward and into a skid on the paving. Past her, Wayne braked, jumped out, raced backed to where Sharon lay face down even with his tailgate...hauled her to her feet and with an arm around her neck, began dragging her toward the cab.
She hung limp on his arm, stunned or unconscious. The smell of fresh blood welling from her hands, knees, and chin washed back to Garreth.
Toews swung out of the car, hatless. "Wayne, what do you think you're doing?" Garreth knew his pulse had to be hammering but Toews sounded only exasperated. "Put Sharon down."
Wayne's lips pulled back in a snarl. "Get the fuck out of here, Toews!"
"I can't do that." He moved forward even with the headlights. "We've got a problem here we need to work out."
"We don't have no damn problem." He continued dragging her backward. "The only fucking problem is between Sharon and me so you butt out! Don't come any closer unless you want her dead!"
His hand went behind his back. Garreth braced for a gun, but Wayne produced a buck knife he pressed against the side of Sharon's neck.
Toews sighed. "Oh, shit, Wayne, you don't want to do that."
The folksy approach made Garreth revise his initial assessment of Toews from Barney Fife to Andy Taylor. But if Toews had a strategy other trying to talk Wayne into giving up, Garreth did not see it...and what were the chances of that considering his and Sharon's comments about Wayne's temperament. Too bad Wayne could not be hypnotized from here. Another approach might work, though.
"I'll get around behind him," he whispered to Toews.
Toews frowned. "You don't need --- "
"It's all she deserves the way she's treated me!"
Garreth circled the rear of the patrol car to the far side of the alley. Hunching low, he ran silently along the wall...hunching even lower across the twelve feet between Toews and the pickup.
"How about how you've treated her," came Verl's angry voice.
Garreth peered over the pickup bed to see the back door of the Main Street open and Verl standing in it with a shotgun.
Wayne shouted, "You point that thing at me and she's dead, old man!"
"Go back inside, Verl," Toews said. "Please."
Garreth reached the pickup cab...saw the lock button down on the passenger door. Shit. Well, what were the chances of opening the door without being heard anyway.
Garreth gritted his teeth in anticipation of pain and leaned into the door...
Wrench!
...and knelt doubled on the seat with jaw clenched, holding his breath to prevent any groan giving away his presence.
Outside, Sharon's whimper indicated she had regained consciousness. Garreth pictured her eyes wide with fear.
Wayne snarled, "Both of you get the fuck out of here before I count to ten or I'm cutting this bitch's throat!"
Sharon squeaked in terror.
"Ten, nine..."
"Wayne, be sensible, amigo. You know your mother wouldn't approve of this."
"Leave my mother out of this! Eight!"
They sounded almost to the door. There was no time for pain to fade. When Wayne reached the door, he would have his back to it for a second or two at most, before turning to push Sharon inside. Garreth forced himself to move, sliding forward behind the steering wheel to the edge of the seat.
"Seven..." Wayne backed up to the door. "Six..."
Now!
Garreth reached out...knocked off Wayne's ball cap with one hand to grab his hair, and wrapped the other hand around Wayne's knife hand. He wrenched the knife hand sideways away from Sharon's neck, feeling bones crack in his grip. Unconsciousness cut off Wayne's scream as Garreth slammed his head sideways into the door frame.
Wayne's knees buckled. Garreth leaped from the cab, pushing Wayne clear of where he dropped Sharon...at the same time plucking the knife from the crushed hand and jamming the blade down between the glass and frame of the driver's door.
Then he stepped over the sprawling Wayne and scooped up Sharon. "Okay, it's over. You're safe."
She buried her head against him, bursting into tears.
The smell of the blood enveloped him, setting fire to Garreth's throat. It smelled so sweet, and he longed to know how it tasted. With her bleeding chin so close to his mouth, he fought not to lick the wound.
Toews and Verl reached them seconds later.
"It looks like Wayne hit his head and knocked himself out," Garreth said. "Do we call an ambulance or just throw him in the back of the truck to transport him?"
"I vote for the truck," Verl said.
Toews smiled but lifted his radio off his belt and thumbed the mike. "Three Baumen. Doris, we need the ambulance behind Wolffe's Jewelry for a prisoner going to the ER. Just to avoid any police brutality nonsense," he said to them. "I'll wait here for it. Verl, you and Mikaelian take Sharon in."
4
Unlike San Francisco General, the ER at St. Francis smelled mostly of disinfectant. Garreth breathed that happily while he and Verl sat in the waiting room alone, with Sharon the only patient until Fire Rescue's ambulance brought Wayne in. The doctor diagnosed Sharon's injuries as abrasions of the hands and knees, a laceration on her chin needing two stitches, and the worst injury, a bad bruise and cracked rib where the door handle struck her back. Toews recorded the visible injuries on her with Polaroids while Dr. Lawrence moved on to examining Wayne.
"I think he was going to grab me as I came out!" Sharon said, voice trembling. "But I'd already left to walk home. I looked back and there he was, driving straight at me!" She sucked in a shuddering breath. "I thought he was going to kill me!"
Toews laid the drying Polaroids on a table beside the ER cart. "Well you don't have to worry about him again. This will put him away for a long time."
"Which is too bad for his parents," Toews added after Verl drove her home. "They're good people and have tried to bring their kids up right."
He used the ER phone to call them while the doctor finished Wayne's examination and studied his x-rays. On the cart Wayne cursed and writhed in obvious agony, his good wrist handcuffed to the cart's side rail, his injured one wrapped in ice bags.
"How'd they take it?" Garreth when Toews hung up.
Toews sighed. "I woke them up of course. That made it worse for them. Earl sounded like he'd been expecting something like this. Dottie was crying in the background."
Garreth sighed in turn. "I always hate family notifications. At least you didn't have to say we killed him."
They stood silent for several minutes, until Toews said, "You know, it seems to me you do want to be a cop. You didn't have to deal with Wayne in the Main Street. You didn't have to follow me to the alley. You didn't have to go after Wayne there. But you did...I'm thinking without ever considering not getting involved. Because it's what you do...what you are."
Garreth grimaced. "Which got my partner shot."
Toews shrugged. "I didn't see any sign of you freezing up tonight. And you weren't a cowboy. It all looked cooly calculated to me."
Dr. Lawrence came over to them.
"Your man has a moderate concussion. Nothing that ought to cause permanent damage. But...every metacarpal in his hand is fractured, with multiple fractures of the first and fifth metacarpals. It's like his hand got caught in a vice."
Toews glanced at Garreth. "That's some grip you have."
Garreth put on a shrug. "Adrenalin is amazing stuff."
Inwardly he winced. He needed to be more careful about how much strength he used. Wayne did not necessarily deserve to be maimed for being a bastard. What was that saw about walking softly and carrying a big stick? In his case, because he had a very big stick he needed to sure he walked softly indeed to avoid tripping himself.
5
Once Wayne had been tucked into the surgery ward with pain killers and a guard Toews introduced as Alan Serk, a reserve officer formerly a highway trooper, they finally left. Standing outside breathing in the night air, Toews said, "I can answer your question now."
Garreth blinked. "What question?"
"You asked earlier whether I would trust you to back me up. The answer is yes. Yes, I would trust you."
Garreth felt his throat catch.
Toews raised a brow. "If you're not bushed from hunting ancestors, bussing dishes, and taking down Wayne, how about riding along with me for a while."
He ended up riding along until the end of the tour at four.
"How do you come to have an eight to four shift?" he asked as they walked Kansas Avenue checking store doors.
"It's Chief Danzig's way of making six sworn officers --- five now, not including him --- an effective force. We have five shifts, four with one officer each, but overlapping so the periods of greatest activity are covered by at least two and often three officers. I'm alone now until four, and Bill Pfannenstiel is for the first four hours of his shift, but that isn't usually a problem since it's almost always dead quiet after midnight, even with the bars being open until one. Except for DUI's on Friday and Saturday, when the weekend drinkers come out to play."
Bearing him out, long minutes of silence on the radio were been broken mostly by time checks and a occasional request for car registration and driver license checks by deputies in sheriff offices for this and surrounding counties. Garreth quickly gathered that all the area law enforcement agencies used the same frequency.
"Mostly this shift does what we're doing now, check the businesses here and out along 282 and make sweeps through the residential neighborhoods. We wouldn't have to rattle doors but it's kind of tradition and makes us visible. We'll drive down the alleys and physically check only the doors on the banks, jewelry store, and drug stores...unless something looks hinky."
"What if there's a situation where you need backup?"
"We have three reserve officers like Serk, one who is a designated responder at night, like a volunteer fireman. Doris calls him. The SO's hear our traffic, too, and if there's a deputy anywhere near, he'll respond if necessary. But yeah..." Toews shrugged. "...it can happen there's no time for backup and I'm on my own." He eyed Garreth. "That idea scare you?"
"I'd be an idiot if it didn't. It isn't what I'm used to."
Toews nodded. "But somehow we usually manage to handle it. We have to."
"What was your plan for handling Wayne?"
"Wait until he was at the truck door then yell, 'Make it a head shot, Duncan!'"
Garreth stared in disbelief. "What kind of plan is that? He'd have --- "
"Panicked...shoved Sharon away and jumped in the truck to run for it, his sole thought being self-preservation." Toews headed back for the patrol car. "Like most bullies he's a coward, and everyone knows Duncan is a crack shot just itching to use his sharpshooter training. I like your plan better, rescuing Sharon and nailing Wayne at the same time. We'd have Sharon safe with mine but have to organize a man hunt for Wayne." His brows rose. "Why are you smiling?"
Was he? Garreth felt his ears heat up. "Well...when you came into the Main Street I pictured you on a horse leading a posse."
Toews laughed. "I do have a horse, a sweet Skipper W mare quick as a cat, but I only use her for working cattle and cutting. I don't suppose you ride."
"No."
They drove down the Kansas Avenue alleys then out to 282. "So what do you do for fun off-duty?"
The most truthful answer was: hang out with Harry and work cases on his own time. Instead, he said, "Hunting and pool."
"You any good?"
"Hunting depends on the game, but I'm an excellent shot. And..." He might as well admit it. "...better than excellent at pool."
Toews' eyed him. "Meaning?"
"Don't bet against me in a game. My grandfather Anton Mikaelian never let anyone forget that the pool halls he ran in Chicago and Sacramento fed and clothed his family through Prohibition and the Depression and all his sons and grandsons better by god show appreciation by learning to play as soon as they could hold a cue and reach the table, even if they had to stand on a stool. Like I did at age five."
Toews smiled. "Then I'll take you to the American Legion some evening. We've got some fellows there who are pretty proud of their games. Maybe we can make a little money."
They circled behind the Co-op elevator and pulled up behind a parked car with steamed windows. Toews flipped on the light bar, but remained in the car...picking up a clipboard and making notes...letting the other car reflect alternating red and white light.
"You're not going to see who it is?"
Toews shook his head. "I know who it is...him anyway, her probably. They're legally consenting adults, if just barely. Both live at home, which is why they've come out here."
"Oh...you know the car."
He nodded, still writing. "That cop wisdom: learn who the people in your territory are, what they do, where and when they do it? Piece of cake in Baumen. Of course, a lot of these people are either friends or I'm related to them by blood or marriage."
Garreth knew his share of street people and felonious types in San Francisco, but what must it be like being familiar with everyone around you, good as well as bad. "So you never check these guys out?" He doubted he could go that far.
"Rarely, as long as they're not minors. They're embarrassed enough right now." He smiled wryly. " I've been where they are."
A sense of deja vu touched Garreth. Seconds later he realized why. This felt almost like his rookie days, absorbing wisdom from his training officer.
"We're a friendly department. Small but effective." Toews burped the siren. "Come on, Kevin; move out."
"Friendly. Like the friendly sharpshooter Duncan?" Garreth said.
The lights of the other car came on. It gunned away, the wheels spitting gravel back at them.
"Ed, yeah." Toews sighed. "Every department has one, don't they. You just have to make allowances for Ed's birth defect."
Garreth frowned. "Birth defect?"
Toews killed the light bar. "Being born with an asshole where his brain should be."
Somewhere in laughing, Garreth found Toews became Nat in his head. And he pulled a mental double-take. Had he heard what he thought he heard? This was like his rookie days. "Are you giving me a sales pitch...trying to recruit me? You're crazy."
"We need another officer." Nat put the car in gear. "It's a great American tradition, coming west and starting over with a clean slate."
"I'm from the West."
Nat snorted. "California isn't the West, just far out. Think about it. Ride along with me again tomorrow night. There should be a little more action, though hopefully not the Wayne Hepner kind. Come by the station early enough to meet some of the other officers."
The offer pulled at Garreth. He knew he would enjoy another ride-along, but since joining was out of the question, no longer than he would be around --- even if they would have him here --- and he remained officially an SFPD officer, he was better off keeping away from temptation. "Verl's offered me a temp job. I have an obligation to show up."
Nat nodded. "Of course. However...I'm betting Verl will apologetically retract the offer. Irene will have come begging to keep her job, with some plausible excuse for the other night --- she had to take her mother to Hadley, the regional medical center in Hays, or something --- and forgot to tell Verl ahead of time. It might even be the truth. Verl will forgive her yet again because she's got no husband and two kids and her mother to support."
"This is more knowing who, what, where, and when?" Garreth said.
"Sadly. See you at the station I hope."
6
Nat knew his people. When Garreth walked into the Main Street, a big-haired blonde reminiscent of the 1940's Claudia Darling offered to seat him. The AWOL Irene, her name tag told him. Verl hurried out of the kitchen to apologize profusely for no longer having a job available. All as predicted.
If he had listened to Nat, Garreth thought irritably, he could have slept the whole day in the earthy darkness of the barn instead of just most of it on his pallet on the floor of his room's windowless bathroom.
A piercing whistle caught him by surprise...and the whistler. Sharon, in uniform, wearing the stitches and butterfly bandage on her chin like a badge of honor.
"Everyone," she called to the handful of diners, "this is the man who saved my life last night! Garreth Mikaelian!" She ran over to throw her arms around him and kiss him.
Maybe he should have anticipated this, he thought in dismay, after Violet had gave him that huge smile and: "I hear you're a hero." when he came downstairs. He needed to fade into Baumen, not become a headline Lane was certain to hear about.
He tried shrugging off heroism. "It was no big deal."
"It was big deal to me!" Sharon said.
Of course...and of course she was going to tell everyone about her rescue. Some hunter he was. Forget stealth, camouflage, or using a blind. Stand in the open like an idiot, shouting his presence. On the other hand...could he not have involved himself last night? No. It was who he was, as Nat said. He could not regret it despite the probable consequences for hunting Lane.
So with the damage done, he might as well have a little fun riding with Nat.
First, however, as long as he had no further need to tolerate daylight, his pallet in the hotel called him.
As he passed the desk, Violet hurried out to it. "You have a phone message, Garreth."
His pulse stuttered in automatic anxiety. Who would call him, or even know he was here?
"Mary Catherine Haas asks please come see her. She's Sharon's grandmother. Here's the address."
She probably wanted to thank him for saving Sharon. Garreth sighed. A phone call would take care of that. "Would you look up her phone number for me?"
"No, no." Violet put a hand over his. "She was very firm. She wants to see you."
Well shit. He eyed the address, trying to remember the streets he rode down with Nat last night. "Where's Poplar?"
"Just after the Pizza Hut."
Farther than he wanted to walk in daylight.
"When you come back, park behind the hotel at the Methodist Church. The parking places out front will be filling with people coming to the five-thirty showing at the theater."
Mrs. Haas' house had a wheelchair ramp up to the porch. And fire at the door as usual. When he rang the bell, the woman answering startled him. Anna Bieber!
No, he realized a moment later. This woman's hair had been shorn boy short and she used a walker. But the face and clear eyes were Anna's, and they searched his face intently. "You're Garreth? I'm Mary Catherine. Please come in."
She led him to a livingroom furnished with the same kind of deep-cushioned chairs and couch Anna's house had.
"Thank you for coming," she said as they sat down. "Violet will have told you I'm Sharon's grandmother, so first I have to thank you for her life. The Lord is mysterious and wonderful, bringing her cousin here from so far away in time to save her."
Garreth started. "Excuse me? Cousin?"
"Yes. You see, I'm also Anna Bieber's twin sister..."
That explained the likeness!
"...and I really asked to see you because I think my niece Mada is the grandmother you've been looking for."
That caught him by surprise, too. "You do? Why?"
She sighed. "History repeating itself. Although we were more practical when Anna got pregnant. We got her a shotgun wedding to Ben Bieber. Even at fifteen and eager to drop our drawers for our Irish stallion every chance we got --- Danny Shannon, a hired hand at our farm..." She smiled at the memory. "...we knew he wasn't husband material."
Garreth jacked his jaw back in place. His mind boggled at these two sweet elderly ladies as hormonal teenagers humping the hired hand then scheming to arrange marriage. "You made Ben think the baby was his?"
She shook her head. "He knew what he was getting. He and Anna had been wanting to marry, so she told Ben that Danny caught her in the barn one night, thinking she was me, and it being dark, she gave herself thinking, until too late, he was Ben, come for more than cuddling that time, and now she was in the family way. She knew Ben would insist on making an honest woman of her and he agreed with her suggestion they sleep together at least once so they could truthfully confess to fornication." She smiled again. "Anna told me Ben marked his territory good and proper by rising to the occasion three or four times before morning."
More information than Garreth needed. "So you think Mada got pregnant, too."
She nodded. "In California, not Europe, and since the professor couldn't marry her, she ended up at your grandmother's boarding house using that false name."
"What about the visitor calling herself Maggie Bieber?"
"I wasn't here --- my husband was in the Army and stationed at Fort Leavenworth for the early thirties --- but I'm thinking 'Maggie' was Ben's sister Adele. She always accused Anna of tricking Ben into marriage, and was outraged at Ben scraping together that tuition money in such hard times for another man's bastard. Danny was long gone when Mada was born --- we made sure he skedaddled before Anna went to Ben, for fear Ben would kill him --- but everyone remembered him and that red hair marked her as his. Ben sent Mada to college to let her get away where no one knew or cared about her paternity. He hoped college worked better than sending her into town for high school did."
With that family history and what the librarian said about Lane's behavior and treatment in high school, no wonder she embraced being a vampire. It gave her the power to take revenge on the world.
He pulled his attention back to Mary Catherine. "How would Adele have known where Mada was?"
"She'd been widowed and was living with Ben. Except for several years after running away with the professor, Mada always keeps in touch with Anna...letters, phone calls. I think she did write in that time...from your grandmother's about her situation...but Anna never got the letter because Adele intercepted it and got so mad she decided to go tell Mada just what she thought of her. Giving her name as Maggie Bieber let Mada know someone knew who she really was."
The plausibility of the story and its smooth dove-tailing with his cover story left Garreth suddenly feeling as if he were wading and lost contact with the bottom...that reality was blurring, and with it his ability to distinguish between the true Mikaelian and role he played here.
Mary Catherine gave an emphatic nod. "I believe when Mada abandoned your father, she went on to Europe like she and the professor originally planned, and that's why Anna believes she was there the whole time. Even though I'm sure Adele spitefully tried to convince Anna otherwise. Ask Mada about it if you're here at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I don't see how it would embarrass her now. Nothing does as far as I can tell. She tells the most scandalous stories about herself."
No...the least scandalous stories, nothing touching the truth about her...Lane the vampire, the killer.
He gave Mary Catherine sincere thanks as he left. "You've answered important questions for me. I will stick around and see Mada."
But he needed to arrange a logical way to do so.
Taking a back way to the hotel, he considered the most obvious option. Signing on to the local PD fit the I Ching advice Lien gave him when he left San Francisco, that acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. His conscience stung at trying for a job that deserved a commitment he knew impossible to honor, but if Grandma Doyle were right about his continued existence being only to bring Lane to justice, they would never learn he joined knowing it would be temporary. Not that Nat's desire to recruit him made acceptance a slam dunk. He doubted Nat had hiring authority and who knew how whoever did might feel about it.
7
Whatever the attitude of those doing the hiring might be when the subject came up, Nat had clearly created some interest here in the PD office. When Garreth walked up to the glass of the front desk a bit before eight, a plump young woman swivelled from a long communications desk that divided the receiving area from one with desks and file cabinets and gave him a bright smile.
"You must be Garreth Mikaelian." She hurried over to eye him with interest through the glass, from head to the sport coat he put on for the evening, to jeans and boots, then opened a door at the end of the desk to let him in. "I'm Sue Ann Pfeifer, the evening dispatcher."
A real Pfeifer. Who smelled of blood and...chocolate?
"Would you like a chocolate chip cookie? I brought a fresh batch this evening." She pointed to a plate of cookies sitting between the radio and teletype on the communications desk.
The smell brought a vivid memory of his mother baking. He remembered the taste...so sweet then, nauseating to think of now. "No thank you. I'm not a cookie eater."
She sighed and patted a generous hip. "I shouldn't be either. Tomorrow --- "
"...You're going to go on a diet." Nat appeared out of a hallway at the back of the room, buckling on his gear belt. "I'm glad you decided to come. Maggie Lebekov here is just getting ready to go off duty, so come and meet her."
He stopped beside a desk where an attractive, trim brunette in her twenties sat typing a report.
"Maggie is our Afternoon officer, our expert with juveniles and domestic disputes. Maggie, this is Garreth Mikelian."
Garreth came around the communications desk, holding out his hand. "Glad to meet you."
She glanced up no farther than his hand, and returned to typing. "Nat, I forgot to mention Scott Dreiling has the keys to his Trans Am again. I guess Mama couldn't stand her baby not being able to drive himself to school and football practice."
Garreth examined his fingers for frostbite. Terrific. They had Up-Against-the-Car Duncan and Ice Queen Lebekov. So much for being a friendly department. Did he really want to work here?
Nat's ears reddened. "Let me show you the rest of the station."
That consisted, downstairs here, of the complaint, communication, and officer desk areas, a locker room for personnel that doubled as an interview room, and across the hallway from it, a look through a glass panel into Chief Kenneth Danzig's office, which also held the evidence lockers. All of which could fit into Homicide's office with room to spare. Upstairs they had three cells --- male, female, and juvenile --- and a drunk tank. Empty at the moment.
"These are basically holding cells.," Nat said. "Anyone with real jail time goes to the county lockup in Bellamy." He sighed. "I apologize for the reception you got from Maggie. It's my fault. I was telling her all about you and Wayne, making it pretty clear I hoped I could talk you into applying here. If you come on, you'll get the shift I have now, which she's been wanting."
A perfect shift for a vampire, but... "She would have seniority, though, so --- "
Nat cut him off with a head shake. "Nope. Danzig's okay with female officers but he won't let one patrol alone at night."
Lebekov was gone from the officer area when they came downstairs again. Nat picked a portable radio out of a rack by the hallway. "Okay, Sue Anne, we're going 10-8."
She beamed at them. "Let's be careful out there."
He saluted and led the way down the hall out the rear entrance to the parking lot. After running through a check of the patrol car's lights, siren, and shotgun, Nat steered out of the parking lot and east on Oak.
"Sorry you didn't get to meet more of us tonight." He peered in his outside mirror at a battered pickup which passed them going the other direction. "Briefly, Danzig's been chief for three years. Came from the Wichita PD. He's...pragmatic...prefers keeping the peace to law enforcement, following the spirit of the law more than the letter of it. He listens to complaints and ideas we have, cares that we have decent equipment and continued training...because good equipment keeps us safer, he says, and pride in it makes us better cops. But you need to always be straight with him. Don't step out of line or he'll land hard on you, and your arrests and evidence better not get thrown out of court for irregularities.
"Lieutenant Byron Kaufman is a twenty year man who definitely prefers peace keeping. I doubt he's ever drawn his weapon except to qualify at the range. Never had to. If talk won't work on an offender, he's a ninja with a baton. He knows this town and the people inside out, and remembers every detail of every case since he joined. Bill Pfannenstiel, our other officer, is almost a carbon copy. They're both a little old fashioned about women in police work."
"Do they give Lebekov static?"
"Not as such, but they tend to be condescending...sure she's just playing cops and robbers until Mr. Right comes along. She wants to prove she isn't and is as good as any male officer. Danzig hired her not long after he came. She was a dispatcher before, on Sue Ann's shift, wanting to be an officer...but Sewing, the old chief, didn't believe in women cops. Neither did the mayor and council until Danzig argued we needed a female for handling juveniles, domestic situations, and rape victims."
So they presumably had to approve him, too.
"She's homegrown like Kaufman, Pfannenstiel, and me. Duncan's semi-homegrown, from Russell. Came here after a hitch in the Marines to share a house with his sister and her two kids."
"He's not a peace keeper type."
Nat shook his head. "But a big stick can be useful." They turned on to Kansas Avenue. "Welcome to the teen cruise and, along with tomorrow night, our heaviest traffic of the week."
It was, Garreth reflected, a matter of perspective and proportion. Hardly heavy traffic by Market Street or Embarcadero standards, but still...a stream of cars, pickups, and vans looping south to the Pizza Hunt and across the tracks north to the Sonic Drive-In and back across the tracks south again. The vehicles frequently pulling up alongside each other for the occupants to call across the space between. Considering Baumen's size, the number impressed Garreth.
"Do you really have this many teenagers?" Every one with a vehicle and a driver's license must be here.
"They come in from the farms and down from Lebeau, too. There isn't much else to do Friday and Saturday night other than the movies, and football this time of year. And tonight the football team isn't playing." Ahead of them a girl leaned out a passenger window toward the car next to them. Nat burped the siren. "Stay in the car!"
She made a face but pulled back inside.
"Do you write them up for things like that?"
Nat shook his head. "Duncan sometimes does. I tend to cut them slack. I've --- "
"Been there?" Garreth said.
Nat grinned, then frowned. "Now he..." he said, pointing at a black Trans Am dodging between lanes on the other side of the tracks, "...is something else. Scott Dreiling, perennial offender...or at least perennially offensive." He whipped the car over the tracks at the next crossing and worked his way toward the Trans Am. "Daddy's on the city council, which Scott thinks entitles him to diplomatic immunity." He pulled alongside the Trans Am and shouted across Garreth toward the blond boy at the wheel. "Scott, try driving like you want to keep those car keys. Officer Duncan is on duty tonight, too."
They pulled ahead. In the side mirror, Garreth watched Scott raise a middle finger after them. "Does the threat of a big stick work?"
Nat rolled an eye toward him. "That was a reminder, not a threat. Just listen to Duncan run DL's and registrations tonight to warn the kids he's watching. And speaking of the devil..."
Garreth glanced over to see another patrol car overtake them on his side. Duncan grinned across at him. "You should have told me you were a cop the other night instead of letting me make an ass of myself."
Garreth bit back the obvious reply.
"Is it true you broke every bone in Hepner's hand? Good going! I wish I'd been there to see it. Has Nat convinced you to apply here yet? We need someone else who knows how to get physical." Giving Garreth a thumbs up, he pulled on ahead.
Garreth stared after him. "Tell me you don't see me as the next big stick."
Nat laughed. "Nope. We only need one. The way you handled Wayne in the Main Street made me think of Bill Pfannenstiel talking raging drunks to their knees in tears."
The radio crackled. "Baumen Three. See Mrs. Linda Mostert at 215 South Cottonwood about a missing person."
Nat keyed the mike. "En route. It sounds like Mr. Halverson is wandering again."
Mr. Amos Halverson turned out to be Mrs. Mostert's father, a healthy but sometimes confused old man who regularly took walks and forgot his way home. By talking to people in yards along the street, they learned the gentleman had headed north. Twenty minutes later they located him working on his third beer in the Cowboy Palace and drove him home.
Returning to patrol, Garreth said, "I wonder if he's all that confused. You realize we paid for his beer and gave him transportation home?"
Nat shrugged. "He's earned it. He ran a grocery store when I was a kid and a lot of times gave me and my sisters free candy. Once when my dad was out of work for six months, he carried us on credit 'til Dad could pay again."
Not something that happened these days, although Garreth remembered being told that Mr. Campera, the bodega owner Wink O'Hare killed, had done that for some regular customers. A kindness which added to the outrage the neighborhood felt at his death.
Past the Pizza Hut Nat turned left onto 282 and checked the businesses along there. He had a conversation with a couple parked behind Walmart before letting them leave --- "Minors," Nat said --- but found no one behind the Dillons supermarket and Co-op. Radio traffic indicated Duncan was indeed busy running car registrations and drivers licenses. Which did not include Scott Dreiling's.
Another pass along Kansas at eleven found the cruise traffic down to a last few vehicles, the Sonic and Pizza Hut closed, and the last of the late show patrons at the movie theater leaving for home.
Nat returned to 282 and pulled into the American Legion parking lot. "Time for a break, before Ed goes off duty." He keyed his mike. "Three Baumen, 10-10 at the Legion. We'll come sometime when the dining room's open. Best steaks in town. But the bar food is good, too, and that's served until the bar and hall close at one."
Garreth followed him inside. "I ate earlier." Finished the last of his blood supply. Tonight he needed a cattle run. "I'll have tea, though."
"Why not check out the pool tables. The game room is that way." He pointed.
The game room had two pool tables along with card tables and dart boards. Both tables had players but as Garreth came in, the men at the nearest one looked up to eye him with interest...both early forties, a fit-looking country club type and the other instantly recognizable as a cop, with shoulders capable of battering through a felon's door.
Country Club smiled. "Are you looking for someone?"
"No...just checking out your tables while Nat grabs a bite at the bar."
"Nat Toews?" Country Club's eyebrows rose. "Are you the guy who helped him rescue that waitress last night? Glad to meet you. Al Dreiling."
"Garreth Mikaelian. Are you Scott's father?" Which made him one of those responsible for approving police hires.
The cop turned back to the table without introducing himself...not acting hostile, just more concerned about his game. With reason, Garreth saw. The six ball sat literally behind the eight ball and not in line for the pocket.
"You've met my son?" Dreiling beamed. "Great kid isn't he."
Garreth hunted a diplomatic reply. "I've only met him in passing so far."
The cop smiled.
Dreiling said, "Care to join us for a quick game, since I think my esteemed opponent is stymied and we might as well start over."
Not hardly stymied. Garreth's fingers itched for a cue. "May I have a try?"
"Be my guest," the cop said.
Garreth picked a cue from the rack, chalked it while studying the table, lined up, and hit the cue ball low. It jumped the eight ball and kissed the six, which brushed against the nine and deflected just enough to slide along the cushion into the pocket. Then Garreth finished clearing the table.
Dreiling blinked. The cop laughed. "Nat said don't bet against him."
Nat said. Suspicion flared in Garreth.
Nat appeared in the game room door. "Let's roll, amigo. We've got a domestic. Tom Loxton."
The name meant nothing to Garreth but the cop swore, confirming Garreth's suspicions.
"You set me up," he said as they ran for the car. "That was Chief Danzig with Dreiling."
"Guilty." Nat flipped on his light bar and peeled out of the parking lot. "He wanted a candid look at you. I didn't know he'd bring Dreiling, but the man was smiling so I'd say it worked out."
Garreth hoped. "I take it this Loxton's bad news?"
"Oh yeah. Not only a mean drunk who's put his wife in the hospital a couple of times but he has man-eating Rottweilers. If they're loose we can't get to the house."
Get to the house. Remembered fire blazed in Garreth and he stood again at Wink O'Hare's kitchen door, paralyzed by the flames. Why did he think he could work for this or any department? For all the houses he might be invited to enter, there would always be those the occupants did not want him in. And another officer could suffer for it.
They pulled up in front of a house with a six foot chain link fence around the property and three Rottweilers with bared teeth barking viciously from the middle of the yard. Duncan stood at the fence with a pepper spray canister while neighbors crowded their own fences or sidewalks watching. A woman screamed inside the house.
"I can't reached the bastards with the spray. Why can't we just shoot the damn things?"
"They haven't attacked us," Nat said.
"So you go in and when they charge you I'll pick them off."
The woman screamed again.
Duncan scowled. "We gotta do something. He's killing her in there."
Garreth thought back to the coyote the other night. Might a domestic dog react the same? He walked up to the fence. "Hey, fellows."
Their barking shifted into hysteria. One dog started forward --- the alpha? --- only to halt. He stopped barking, too, and lifted his nose, sniffing. Then he stared at Garreth, head tilted in obvious confusion. The other two dogs, one male, one female, looked at the alpha and stopped barking, too.
Garreth stared back. "That's better. Nice dogs."
His peripheral vision caught Nat, Duncan, and the neighbors gaping from him to the dogs. Son of a bitch. Did he have yet another Vale of Chablis here?
The woman in the house screamed again...higher, louder, sounding more in pain.
What was it the deputy said: the good Lord looks after fools. "I think I can handle the dogs." He hoped.
He eased open the gate enough to slide inside, keeping his gaze locked on the alpha's. Slowly he walked toward them. The dogs stood rooted.
"Good dogs!"
Their stubby tails wagged. When he reached down to gingerly pat the alpha's massive head, its tail wagged faster, and faster yet when he rubbed its ears. The other two crowded in for a pat, too.
"I think they're all right now," he called back toward the fence. "Come on in."
"Not on your life," Duncan said. "Not until they're locked up."
Oh, yeah...Vale of Chablis.
"Hurry if you can," Nat said as the screams in the house rose still higher. "There's a dog run in back."
Garreth gave the alpha a light slap... "Hey, let's go for a walk. Come on. Heel." ...and set off around the house.
The alpha fell in beside him, followed by the other two.
Halfway along the house the sounds from inside the house included Duncan and Nat's voices, both shouting orders. Then a man screamed and swore...not Duncan or Nat. Loxton. The alpha halted, head turning toward the house and his master's voice.
"Hey, fellow." Garreth rubbed his knuckles hard on the dog's head to pull attention back to him. "Come. Heel." He grabbed the dog's collar and tugged.
To his relief the dog came with him. He broke into a jog while the woman's screams turned to profanity and: "No, stop that! Let go of him! I'll kill you!" Every cop's nightmare on a domestic call...the victim turning on her rescuers.
The dog run occupied most of the back yard. Garreth pushed open the gate and walked inside. "Kennel up, guys." When the alpha paused again at Loxton's curses, Garreth raised his voice. "Kennel up!"
The dogs followed him in. He gave them a last hurried pat, backed out, and latched the gate tight. Then sprinted for the front door desperately wondering how to enter the house. Maybe stand at the door and shout in asking if they needed him?
To his relief, he dodged the bullet. Duncan was dragging a cursing cuffed male down the front steps, Loxton's red face and eyes squeezed tight in pain testifying he had received the pepper spray Duncan could not use on the dogs. "You've blinded me you fucking bastard! I'll sue you. I'll have your badge for killing my dogs!"
On the porch Nat struggled with the victim, who despite a bloody nose, swelling eyes, and bruises forming on her throat, was trying to claw at Nat's eyes. She had connected once. Three scratches crossed one of his cheeks.
"Let me go you nazi bastard! I'll kill you!" She tried to kick him. "Tom, Tom baby! I love you! Let him go! Don't hurt him! He hasn't done anything wrong! It was my fault!"
Garreth leaped onto the porch and behind Nat. Did the woman still have enough vision to see him? Could he even get her attention in her hysteria?
Before he could try, she suddenly ran out of steam and sank to a sobbing heap on the steps. "My fault. I just upset him. I know better. Please don't hurt him."
Duncan, meanwhile, had Loxton almost to his patrol car. "You're not blinded and you know it. We didn't kill your fucking dogs, either!" He shoved Loxton onto the edge of the rear seat and brought a bottle of water from the trunk. "Look up and open your eyes!" And poured the water into Loxton's eyes to wash out the pepper spray.
He had finished and was pushing Loxton the rest of the way into the back seat, when a Chevy Malibu wagon pulled up behind him.
Chief Danzig climbed out and assessed the scene. "I take it we lucked out and the dogs weren't loose."
"Oh yeah they were," Duncan said, "and ready to eat us alive...until the California Kid here worked some kind of voodoo that turned them into pussycats."
Danzig started. "You're joking."
A chorus of neighbor voices swore to the story.
He eyed Garreth in amazement. "No one but Loxton has ever been able to control his dogs."
Garreth shrugged in pretended modesty. "Dogs like me." Or he had been damn lucky.
"You're full of surprises." Danzig turned to Nat, who had the wife on her feet again, still sobbing, and was steering her down the sidewalk. "You about to take her to the hospital?" At Nat's nod, he said, "Then I'm stealing your ride-along. Hop in, Mikaelian, and let's talk."
Not immediately, however. Danzig drove in silence, pulling finally into a parking area in Pioneer Park. Still saying nothing, he led the way down the sidewalk and over a swinging bridge to an artificial island created by a loop of the Saline River. They sat on the steps of the bandstand in the middle of the island, where Danzig lit a thin cigar from a box in his jacket pocket. The sweet smoke curled around Garreth, mixed with Danzig's blood scent.
"Do you want a job here?"
Shades of Phil Mikaelian, cutting to the chase. And as with his father, Garreth decided to answer in kind. "I already have a job back home."
"Which I understand you have reservations about." Danzig took a puff. "Yet here you've demonstrated yourself a capable officer, so...what's the story?"
"Didn't Nat tell you?"
"Let me hear it from you."
Always be straight with him, Nat had said. Okay. Leaving out only mention of vampires and his real reason for being here, Garreth told Danzig everything...from Lane's attack to Harry's shooting. Danzig listened without comment to the end, smoking his cigar and leaning back against a post supporting the bandstand roof.
With the cigar smoked down to its plastic mouthpiece, he ground out the butt on the steps and dropped it in his pocket. "Assuming you're right about trust of you being forever tainted out there, which I'm not convinced is the case, what's holding you back from taking a job where you have a clean slate? The admittedly big hit in salary? Reluctance to let go of the familiar? Trying to make family and friends understand why you'd trade a Cadillac department for a Go-cart?" He smiled wryly. "I ran into that, taking this job. From my wife, too, at first, though now she's glad we're here."
"I never thought about salary," Garreth said. "The rest, yes." But he might as well confess the strongest reason. "At Loxton's, when I knew Nat and Duncan were having to fight the wife as well as Loxton and thought they might need me inside, I couldn't even think of trying to go through the back door. They didn't need me but what if they had? Can this department risk me freezing up again at a door?"
Danzig eyed him. "Are you going to let fear cripple you and keep you from a job it seems to me you enjoy?"
If only there were a way to ensure entry into dwellings when he needed to be there. Maybe there was, he thought suddenly. What if he volunteered to conduct free home security checks for everyone in town. Use his own time to do it, even when it meant suffering daylight. It would be good public relations for the department, good for the homeowners, and good for an invitation in everywhere.
Danzig's brows rose. "Did I just see a light go on over your head?"
Why not answer. "Thinking about going into homes gave me a public relations idea."
Danzig listened to it, and smiled. "That sounds like a yes, you want the job." He sobered. "After dealing with Hepner and Loxton I don't have to tell you this job is just as hazardous as in a city, but you ought to know it can be worse. Remember the Clutter murders in Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood? Those were here in Kansas. We also had a pair of spree killers named York and Latham come through in 1959. They were tried and convicted over in Russell. We're on the drug traffic pipeline and almost every year there's a highway patrol trooper killed making a routine stop on 1-70. Sometimes there isn't much backup."
"Nat's told me."
Danzig stood and stretched. "I also want to tell you if you do prove psycho and present a danger to the your fellow officers, I'll shoot you down like a mad dog. Come in Monday, then, and fill out an application and we'll go from there."
8
"From there" launched an intense two weeks...applying, being fingerprinted to prove he was who he claimed, sliding through a physical with a Dr. Staab tut-tutting over the usual low blood pressure and heart rate, hypnotizing a lab tech into reading normal values in the blood work, being tested for a Kansas drivers license, interviewing with the mayor and city council. No one hires on to a new department in two weeks, Garreth would have thought, but they seemed to be fast-tracking him, as if afraid of him changing his mind. They apparently considered his records from the SFPD enough of a background investigation.
Every night he continued riding along with Nat, learning the radio codes the department used, memorizing the town and people. He saw how the cruise traffic changed Fridays when the Baumen Timberwolves had home games. Sparse early --- everyone went to the games --- it ramped up afterward, game-goers howling and waving banners as they circled up and down Kansas. Especially when Baumen won, Nat said.
Riding along, he wangled invitations into homes when possible, and learned to recognize the voices of various sheriff departments' personnel on the radio. Including a Trego County dispatcher named Lila, with whom their own night dispatcher Doris Schoning, though thin as Sue Ann was plump, exchanged recipes in the wee hours. After the shift he studied the Kansas Criminal Code and Vehicle Code until dawn.
All the while feeling wretched. Sending the SFPD his resignation left him gutted, despite the conviction he must be here. Phone calls home, full of lies, made him feel even worse. On Saturday he laid groundwork by telling Harry and his father he was in Kansas...having met a police chief who invited him deer and turkey hunting here. When talking to Harry, he said the meeting occurred in Davis; talking to his father, it happened on the fictitious Montana hunting trip. Late in the week he called home enthusiastic reports of the hunting and the area. The next Tuesday he broke the news of being so taken with Baumen he had applied to the department here.
An exasperated Serruto said, "I think you're totally screwed up and thank god you'll be someone else's headache now. But I hope the new job works out for you."
It baffled Harry, moved now to rehab. "Don't do this. You're over-reacting. You're too hard on yourself and you're underestimating the understanding of your fellow officers. What are you going to do when you wake up a few weeks or months from now and realize what a mistake you made? "
He told Lien the truth about joining this department, but it baffled her, too, even as she agreed to put his personal belongings in storage and sublet his apartment. "I understand how much you want to catch Lane but why must you give up everything here to do it? Isn't your leave of absence enough time to stake out this town?"
"Remember I Ching," he told her. "Acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. This badge gives me proper authority."
"Doesn't your San Francisco badge? The rest of that text warns against setting yourself up to alter things according to your own judgment, which can end in mistake and failure."
That disturbed him. Was he doing that? "I'm trying not to do that."
"And if or when you do catch her, what then? How can you come home again."
He could not of course. He could never go home again. With luck, though, that would never be an issue. He would be...crumbled to dust or something. "I'll just have to wait and see."
The most difficult call of all was to his parents, worse than telling them about Judith divorcing him. The phone lines fairly melted from his father's anger. "I swear I don't know what the hell is going on in your head! You want throw away your whole career with the SFPD for a one-horse department because you're buying a load of bullshit from this hick police chief on the basis of him being a good hunting host! What is it, you think it's going to be a soft job where you'll never face another situation like the one with Harry? That isn't starting over. It's burying yourself!"
A fitting choice of words if only his father knew it. Garreth hung up in abject misery.
"I take it the news didn't go down well at home," Nat said when Garreth walked into the station that night.
It showed that much? "Not exactly."
As usual Maggie Lebekov remained after her shift typing reports. She looked up. "I can see why it's hard to understand you giving up a being a detective in a city like San Francisco." Though the frost had been melting since that first meeting, her attitude remained: what was he doing here. "It's a job most cops would die for. What!" she said as Nat choked.
"He did die for it."
She frowned. "What?"
Garreth sighed. Some general details were bound to leak out. "After being assaulted by a suspect I was mistakenly declared dead." She wondered why he wanted this job. Let her consider this. "There's nothing like waking up in cold storage to make you examine your life and priorities."
Her eyes widened. "You were actually in the morgue?"
"Ewwww!" Sue Ann waved her hands in front of her face like someone shooing flies. "That would freak me out!"
A statement hardly touching the horror of it. Garreth clamped down on the memory and gave them a shrug. "Sometimes it's enough to realize you're still alive."
He followed Nat out, with Maggie staring thoughtfully after him.
In the car, Nat made a right turn out of the parking lot instead of the usual left toward Kansas Avenue. "I have one piece of good news for you. You know how you've been wanting a place of your own?"
Oh yes...somewhere with privacy, without Violet, friendly as she was, watching his coming and going. Even at local prices, a house was out of his range, and the closest Baumen came to apartments were duplexes...currently all occupied. "You know of something?"
"Helen Schoning, cousin to Doris's husband, has an apartment over her garage. The widower renting it before married a woman in Russell and moved there. It's just three blocks from the station when you want to walk to work. Helen invited us to come look at it this evening."
Garreth liked the house...two stories, built of the native sandstone with a driveway running under a portico on the side. He liked the woman who appeared in answer to Nat's push of the doorbell, too...an attractive, slender woman in her late forties with only a trace of grey in short chestnut hair.
She extended a hand to Garreth. "So you're the Frisco Kid. It's a pleasure to meet you. Call me Helen, please. I'm Miss Schoning only when we meet while I'm on duty as clerk of the municipal court. The garage is this way."
Out a side door into the portico and back along the drive to a large two-car garage.
She led the way up a set of steps on the side to the second floor and after unlocking the door, stood back to let them enter first. "This used to be my father's den."
It looked like a man's place, wood-paneled with built-in bookcases and a large leather chair and a leather couch that opened out into a bed. A rear corner had been partitioned for the bathroom. Between that and a set of french doors leading out onto a deck above the garage doors stretched the cabinets and small appliances of an apartment kitchen. Including a small refrigerator! No more need for the ice chest. Too bad it could not be a basement apartment but with the French doors blocked by heavy curtains, which he would buy tomorrow, it ought to serve his needs. It only remained to buy a few non-perishable food items and some cooking utensils and tableware at the thrift store so, in case of visitors, his kitchen did not look as oddly bare as Lane's.
Helen said, "I can provide sheets and blankets until you buy your own. The phone is an extension from the house. You can use that and pay part of the bill or put in a private line. Half the garage is yours to use, too."
She took them downstairs and raised one of the garage doors.
"This is your side. If you want to work on your car, feel free to use my tools. Just ask first and put them back afterward."
Garreth stared around the garage. With these tools, Helen Schoning could open her own auto repair shop. "You use these?"
Nat grinned in his peripheral vision.
She smiled and went over to stroke the fender of the car in the other half of the garage. "Someone has to keep this baby running."
A gleaming old Rolls Royce. He felt his jaw drop.
"My father bought this in 1955 when his first oil wells came in. He was so proud of it. It was the only car like it in Bellamy County. Still is." She paused, chin down, looking at him through her lashes. "Mr. Mikaelian, I do have one favor to ask." She pulled him to the other side of the Rolls and dropped her voice. "If you should come home some night and find a car in your side, will you please park on my side of the drive so the other car can get out? And say nothing about it to anyone?"
He felt himself staring again and closed his mouth with a snap. "No problem."
She smiled. "I hoped you'd understand. I enjoy being single but I also like companionship from time to time. Discretely, of course. This is a small town and some of my friends are married."
Garreth regarded her with amazement. She was not what he expected to find here. "You don't miss the stability of a long-term relationship?"
She smiled. "What stability? Nothing ever says the same. People, either. Each of my relationships has suited my needs at the time. There's a quote by Henry Ellis I like: 'All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.' It seems to me you're practicing some of that yourself."
Except his mingling felt more desperate than fine.
9
On Monday the job became official. Having been duly sworn, uniformed, and equipped, Garreth started six months of probation and re-acclimation to the bulk of body armor and weight of the gear belt. The sun setting before the shift started made it a comfortable patrol --- no need for his glasses --- but it felt odd riding alone. Yes he wanted this and it gave him freedom to pursue his own agenda, but he also missed Nat. Whom from here on he would likely see only when he came on duty and Nat briefed him about the day's activity and wants and warrants.
Solo worked well, though, when he went looking for three minors who managed to steal a bottle of peach brandy from Hartzfeldt's Liquor. Luckily the clerk recognized two, not by name but as boys he had seen skateboarding on south Beach. Reasoning the boys wanted to hide but remain close to home where they felt safe and comfortable, Garreth slipped on foot around the Hammond greenhouses, which sat behind houses on the east side of Beach's 200 block. No need for a flashlight with his night vision, and soon he just followed his nose, tracking the mixed brandy and blood scents to the trio squatting between bushes and the rear wall of one greenhouse. Garreth Mikaelian, semi-human bloodhound, he reflected wryly.
Twenty minutes later their parents met him at the station. With the brandy paid for, the store owner declined, against Garreth's advice, to press charges. Watching the boys being dragged away by parents apparently less outraged by the theft and drinking than by the lies that let each think the boys were studying at another's house, Garreth wondered if juvenile proceedings might not be more humane than the verbal flaying and grounding for life that awaited them at home. If those parents were anything like his father and Grandma Doyle.
As the shift wore on, he found himself welcoming passing contact with Duncan...pulling up window to window with him a couple of time to pass on information...or just listen to Duncan complain about the "little Dreiling shit" flipping him off again, or reveal he was switching shifts with Maggie on Friday in order to watch his nephew play in the big Homecoming game against arch rival the Bellamy Cougars.
Maggie working at night? "Danzig's allowing the switch?"
Duncan nodded. "Yeah, since she won't be working alone. And he understands why I want to be there since he knows I've been like a father to my sister's kids...and his son is playing, too."
The switch ought to make Maggie happy and make her feel she was finally being given a chance to play with the boys.
Later Duncan radioed: "Hey, Dr. Doolittle, I've got a loose dog. Come do the voodoo that you do."
"Loxton's dogs again?"
"Nope, an ankle-biter. He got out a door Mama left open for the cat and won't come to her or me. Mama is hysterical because her baby is out near 282 and might get run over."
The dog did not come to Garreth, but it let him walk up to it and pick it up.
"Damn, you need to show me how you do that," Duncan said, and frowned when Garreth could only shake his head.
"I don't know how it works; it just does."
Returning the dog to the tearfully grateful owner, Garreth asked to see the door the dog used for its escape. When she invited him in --- one more dwelling entry accomplished, hundreds yet to go --- he examined the door. Teeth marks on the rubber doorstop told him how the dog opened the door enough to escape.
"Why not let the cat use a window," he said. "Put a trellis or something outside that the cat can climb but is too flimsy for a person, and when you know how far you want the window open, drill a hole through each upper corner of the lower sash into the edge of the upper sash and pin it with 16-penny nails. That will prevent anyone outside from opening the window farther and climbing in. Soon the department will be offering free residential security checks and at that time we'll be happy to come back and make suggestions for the rest of your home."
"Is that for real?" Duncan asked as they left. "Who'll be doing the checks?" Not him, he clearly hoped.
"Me. Can you think of a better way to get to know everyone?"
Duncan looked undecided between admiring Garreth's ingenuity and considering it suspicious zeal.
Garreth sighed inwardly. Between this and not being able to pass on the dog control secret, they had some tension building. He needed to defuse it so they could work together. "Hey, you'd like to get the Dreiling boy for giving you the bird, right?"
Duncan grimaced. "Oh, yeah...but unfortunately that ain't illegal."
"Not flipping you off, but...I just remembered something that worked for me once. If Scott's using his left arm and happens to be at a corner, that looks like a right turn signal. If he then fails to make the turn, it's an illegal signal."
Duncan blinked. "You actually got away with writing someone up for that?"
Garreth shrugged. "Mostly because the punk was stupid enough to mouth off to the judge. If Scott defends himself by saying he wasn't signaling a turn, just contempt of cop, who knows if he could still buy himself some trouble. You have to be patient and catch him just right...and you never heard it suggested by the probationary officer."
Grinning, Duncan gave him a thumbs up and drove off singing in a surprisingly pleasant baritone. Garreth recognized a Kenny Rogers tune but the words he made out before Duncan moved out of range sounded like: "I write up your life..."
Grinning, Garreth returned to patrol, making a point of driving down Pine past Anna Bieber's house. He planned to do so regularly, to create the opportunity for a seemingly unplanned reconnection with her. He had identified an orange Chevy Vega wagon sitting in the driveway the day he visited her as belonging to her daughter Dorothy Vogel. Riding with Nat, he looked for the vehicle around town. Most evenings it sat in Dorothy's own driveway but he had seen it downtown one Thursday, and out at Dillons this last Thursday, then in Anna's driveway later. Hopefully, it indicated Dorothy regularly shopped for her mother on Thursday evening. With luck, he could take advantage of that.
For now he focused on the job...checking out a loud music complaint and convincing the offender to turn it down, taking a car vandalism report...a keyed hood on a car at the Cowboy Palace, the scratches spelling bastard. Someone with a beef against the car's owner Marvin Jacobs, obviously, though Jacobs claimed ignorance of who might do this.
On the next pass down Kansas, he noticed Castle Drugs next to the Main Street still fully lighted despite being closed and brought the car around to park in front. After checking the notes he made riding with Nat for the name of Castle's owners, he went to look in the windows. A woman bent down behind a display case against the left hand wall. Since she made no attempt at stealth, he doubted her presence was felonious, but he knocked on the door and attracted her attention, just to be sure.
She came carrying a box with a rosary visible through its clear plastic top.
"Mrs. Wiest?" he said. "I saw your lights on. Is everything okay?"
"Fine." She peered at him, forehead furrowed. "I haven't --- oh, I have see you before, with Nat Toews. Aaron said we were getting a new officer. My husband's on the City Council. Yes, I'm fine, just putting out some stock we've gotten in for Christmas. This is a good time to do it...no interruptions. Usually," she added with a smile.
"I wanted to be sure. If I might offer a suggestion for store security, your stock shelves sitting parallel to the front of the store as they do provides concealment for an intruder. Orienting the shelves at right angles to the front would reduce the area for concealment to just the far end of the row and give us an otherwise clear view all the way back to the pharmacy."
Her face went thoughtful. "That's certainly something to consider. Thank you."
"The department can provide a home security check for you, too, if you wish." He touched the brim of his hat. "Good night."
Duncan went on high-band at Walmart and a short while later at the Co-op...probably out of the car to sneak up on parking couples. His touted theory being that if you embarrassed them enough, the couples would not come back. Garreth suspected Duncan just enjoyed catching them bare-assed.
Toward midnight, Sue Ann sent both Duncan and him to the Brown Bottle for a Drunk and Disorderly complaint. Garreth quickly caught the bottle-swinging menace's gaze and took the fight out of him.
"The voodoo works with people, too?" Duncan said as they steered the staggering drunk to Duncan's car. "Damn, man, you have to teach me that."
"I wish --- do you suppose Mom and Dad know he's out this late on a school night?" Garreth pointed at Scott Dreiling's Trans Am on the far side of the tracks, gunning down the southbound lanes.
Duncan snorted. "Of course not...because the little shit knows how to get around them. You go by the house right now and he'll be in his room swearing he's been there all evening studying. Mom won't know better because she'll have fallen asleep watching TV, if she hasn't already gone to bed, and Dreiling is at the American Legion playing pool like he does every Monday."
Garreth raised his brows. "One hand on the hood of his car will prove it's been driven recently."
"Yeah, but Mom won't check, just raise hell about us harassing her baby." He shut his car door on the drunk. "You understand I'm taking this bozo in because I'm headed for the station anyway, but if he hurls in my back seat, you have to drive this car tomorrow."
That left Garreth alone the rest of the shift. Doris sent him to The Beergarten to take a stolen car report...only to learn from other patrons that the victim's wife had driven it away after coming back from the restroom to find her husband plastered against another woman on the dance floor. Garreth had Doris call the wife to come back for her husband, then left not envying the gentleman that ride home.
At a quarter to one he started walking downtown...a virtual ghost town by this time with no one else on the street and just a handful of cars. Two in front of the hotel, one by the Brown Bottle --- probably belonging to their drunk tank occupant --- and half a dozen down by the VFW. Those began leaving as a group came out of the building, one man in a wheelchair. Then he did become the only living thing on the street. The stoplight had gone to cautionary flashing. A breeze brought in scents of grass and dust from the north, the distant lowing of cattle --- reminding him he needed to make a blood run tonight --- and some yipping and howling. Coyote songs? He remembered hearing that two or three coyotes could sound like a pack. These did. He turned down the radio to hear them better.
So different from Patrol in San Francisco, but...a difference he realized he liked. Peaceful. And free of any blood scents right now. He regretted this was only temporary.
His radio clicked. "Baumen Seven, what's your twenty?" Doris said.
He keyed the mike. "Kansas Avenue. You have something for me?"
"No, just wanted to see how you're doing. Ed serenades me when he's worked this shift." She sounded wistful.
Garreth smiled. "I won't try competing with him." Or risk some FCC voice breaking in to tell him his signal did not conform to regulations and now he needed to fill out a stack of forms explaining the violation.
Cutting across the tracks from the Sonic to work his way down the other side of Kansas Garreth took note of the vehicles parked in the lot beside the VFW. Employees inside cleaning up, but with an extra one tonight, parked close to the street. A Dodge Caravan that still remained when he drove up the alley later. He pulled in behind to check it and noted a handicap placard hung on the rearview mirror.
"That van is Martin Lebekov's, Maggie's father," Doris said when he ran the plates. "Has something happened to it?"
Garreth quickly moved to check inside the vehicle and found a man lying sideways across the front seat...snoring. The man in the wheelchair leaving earlier. The wheelchair sat where a rear seat normally would and the van had hand controls. "No, it's 10-4." He hoped. He shook Lebekov. "Sir...Mr. Lebekov. Wake up."
It took shaking him several times for Lebekov to groan and push himself upright...white hair, weathered skin, big powerful-looking hands, both legs ending at the knees. Garreth recognized him now as one of the mechanics at A-1 Auto. He squinted at Garreth. "Who are you? What's wrong?" Then the squint focused on Garreth's badge and he groaned. "What time is it?"
"About two. Are you all right?"
"Not really." He sighed. "A member died today, Rich Wiltz. He was a Navy pilot in the Pacific in World War II and broke his back when he got shot down. They said he'd never walk again but he did, and carried mail here for thirty years. We were toasting him and I got toasted, too." He smiled wryly. "I thought maybe if I just rested a little I'd be okay to drive home, but...maybe not."
"We can call someone to come after you, Maggie or your wife."
Lebekov shook his head. "I lost my wife ten years ago and I hate to wake up Maggie. She worries enough about me already." He grimaced. "But I suppose I have to."
"Tell you what," Garreth said. "I'll drive you home, and if you give me your keys and tell me how to work the controls, I'll come back after my shift and drive your van home. Maggie doesn't have to know you broke curfew."
Lebekov grinned. "Done." On the way home with the wheelchair folded in the rear seat of the patrol car, he said, "Maggie's talked about you, I mean, complained about you. She thought there had to be something wrong with you to come work here. But now I understand you had a bad experience out there?"
"Yes." To change the subject he said, "You're too young for World War II. Did you lose your legs in Korea?"
"Oilfield accident after Korea. Some pipe rolled on me. You're single, right? You ought to ask Maggie out."
That change of subject caught him flatfooted. "Ah, Mr. Lebekov --- "
"Call me Martin. Look, Maggie is too serious. She needs to get out and have some fun but she says all the single men here are neanderthals, either thinking her being a cop is a joke or they want to be humped in handcuffs. Not that a roll in the hay wouldn't be good for her, just not that way."
Garreth said nothing. He hoped that was alcohol talking, and Martin remembered none of it in the morning.
The rest of the shift passed quietly and after he delivered the Caravan, Garreth went for his blood run with four quart bottles tucked in a backpack. He filled them from six steers and by the time he finished had collected an audience of two coyotes. They stayed back at his orders but like the coyote that first night, seemed fascinated by him and accompanied him most of the way back to town. Falling into bed, memory of the run lingered with him, the exhilaration of moving effortlessly through a beautiful October night, the stars brilliant in a moonless black sky, the coyotes running like ghosts around him. All that spoiled it was the memory being his alone. With dawn pulling him into sleep, Garreth reflected that Helen Schoning had it wrong. Solitude was lonely if you never had anyone to share a memory with.
10
Maggie left typing reports that evening to follow Garreth into the locker room, face tense. "I woke up last night when I heard someone in the driveway and saw you getting my father out of your patrol car. What did he do?"
"Nothing wrong." Garreth buckled on his gear belt. "He had a few too many in honor of Rich Wiltz and I gave him a ride home."
Her face relaxed but still reflected uncertainty. "You could have called me."
"Why bother waking you?"
"What about the van?"
"After my shift I drove it to your place. Martin thought you'd worry not seeing it there in the morning." Garreth settled the belt more comfortably on his hips. "He says you worry too much about him."
Her face tensed again. "What else did Dad say about me?"
Before she finished the question, Garreth had a lie and innocent expression ready. "Nothing. Why?"
She let out her breath. "No reason. Thank you for helping him." After a moment of hesitation, she smiled and added, "Let's be careful out there."
The mantra they all had now, thanks to Hill Street Blues, but not what she first considered saying, he thought. Still, watching her hurry out, the warmth in that smile was enough, reassuring him the last frost had melted.
Though what he really wanted, he decided as the week wore on, was the key to dealing with Duncan. No need to be buddies but working together would be more comfortable without this intermittent flare of resentment.
As on Wednesday, when Sue Ann dispatched Duncan to a domestic between a mother and daughter. Duncan radioed back, "I'm not getting between those two wildcats again. Let Seven work his voodoo on them." And later he pulled up beside Garreth outside Gfeller Lumber to say, "Were the Ketzners fun? Though I don't suppose they gave you any trouble."
In fact they had, being so angry they fought his control. It had been a tightrope walk, focusing alternately on mother and daughter, always on the edge of losing them...until the daughter obeyed his suggestion to go to her room. A retreat punctuated by a slamming door as she left his control.
"You know," Duncan said, "you're so good at this, you're probably going to end up handling all the domestics. Unless you teach me the secret, too."
Garreth sighed. "I've told you, I don't know why people and dogs respond to me the way they do. Maybe I have an authoritative voice."
"Okay." Duncan spread his hands. "Keep it to yourself. But that's going to come back and bite you in the ass."
After Duncan left, Garreth banged his head on the steering wheel in frustration...and went off to take a report on Halloween decorations stolen from a yard. Something they would probably have to deal with several times in the next two weeks. The up side: the address let him cruise past Anna Bieber's house afterward.
Anna stood on her porch talking to a neighbor woman at the bottom of the steps.
Garreth pulled to the curb and climbed out. "Hello, Mrs. Bieber. How are you doing this evening?"
Anna peered at him. "Do I know --- oh, you're the young man looking for his grandmother." Her brows rose. "What are you doing in a police uniform?"
He smiled at her. "I like Baumen so well I decided to settle here."
Her forehead furrowed. She seemed about say something when his car radio came on. "Baumen Seven, we need a welfare check on Hattie Cromer at 203 East Maple. Her daughter in Victoria has been trying to call her for several hours without getting an answer."
"Excuse me, ladies." Garreth touched the brim of his cap and hurried back to the car.
Hattie Cromer proved to be fine, just minus her hearing aids...taken out to change the batteries and left out because she had not thought she needed them the rest of the night.
Sue Ann sent him from there to the Lutheran Church for a fender bender. Like the other churches in town, St. Marks had a Wednesday evening service. Tonight, unfortunately, Christian forgiveness had not extended past the service for the choir soprano shrilling at the baritone who backed into her T-bird.
While radio traffic indicated Duncan took a report at the Phillips station on a customer who used the self-service pumps and drove off without paying, Garreth answered a noise complaint and without vampire compulsion, had the young man working on his motorcycle shut it off for the night. Then he listened to Duncan go on high band behind the Co-op while he refereed neighbors over the one neighbor's dog, whose barking the other neighbor claimed was keeping her baby awake.
The next time he passed Anna's, her house had gone dark.
Not that he had any excuse to speak to her again tonight. His hope lay in tomorrow.
11
The evening began with promise.
Maggie invited him to eat with them on Sunday. "We like going to early Mass, so we have the rest of the day free. Come over at ten for waffles and my Uncle Leo's homemade sausage, the best sausage you'll ever eat."
He accepted, despite the daylight time and food he needed to weasel out of eating. The invitation counted the most, making him feel accepted.
Out on patrol, traffic moved smoothly. He saw no sign of Scott Dreiling's Trans Am. No one reported stolen Halloween decorations, though a dog did break out of its yard to attack a scarecrow at the neighbor's house. The dog followed Garreth back to its yard. Its owner agreed to restore the scarecrow. Problem solved without further action necessary...giving him freedom to locate Dorothy Vogel's Vega at Dillons.
Luck continued to smile. Duncan radioed a request they meet and Garreth suggested the parking lot of Gfeller Lumber, from which he could watch the Dillons and Walmart exits.
Duncan wanted to crow about locating the driver who had taken off from Phillips the night before without paying. "And I did it with a partial tag number and clerk at Phillips just remembering it was a light colored Galaxy."
Garreth only half listened to the long narrative of how Duncan ID'd the car and driver, watching the exits south of them. He caught the end of the recitation, though, and gave Duncan the praise he wanted...and deserved. "Good work. What does the guy say about not paying?"
Duncan snorted. "That he 'forgot' because he was thinking so hard about getting home."
An orange Vega wagon pulled out of the Walmart lot and turned up the highway. Turning onto Pine gave Dorothy a straight drive across town to Anna's place. Garreth set a clock in his head. She never hurried, in case her mother wanted to pause along the way to say hello to a friend, so he had a few minutes before he needed to be there...time enough to avoid arousing Duncan's curiosity by rushing off.
"Is the Phillips manager prosecuting?" he asked.
"Oh yeah. Got to set an example." Duncan chuckled. "Mr. Absentminded has to pay for the gas and the fine for not paying in the first place."
Garreth put his car in gear... "Expensive fill-up. Again, great job." ...and with a salute, pulled out onto the highway.
He timed his pass at Anna's house so Dorothy had pulled into the driveway and begun taking bags out of the open back. Anna was disappearing in through the side door of the house.
He parked, telling Sue Ann he would be on high band, and climbed out of the car with his portable radio. "Mrs. Vogel, can I help you with those?"
Dorothy looked around, took a moment to recognize him, then smiled. "Mother's ancestor hunter. She said you'd moved here and joined the police. Is this the serving part of serving and protecting?"
Garreth smiled back. "Yes, ma'am. Which bags would you like me to take?"
Between them, they managed everything in one trip. The side door opened into a small porch with another door opening into the kitchen.
There Dorothy set the bags she carried on the table. "Put it all down here." She raised her voice. "Mother, come see our new grocery boy."
Shortly, Anna appeared through a hallway door and seeing him, raised her eyebrows. "In a snazzy uniform, too."
Garreth shrugged. "I was passing and saw your daughter with a load of groceries to bring in, so I gave her a hand."
"That's very kind. Thank you. I'm glad you stopped."
"Do you want this in your sewing room?" Dorothy picked up a Walmart bag bulging with red plaid flannel.
"That's a lot of flannel," Garreth said.
Anna nodded. "I'm making a set of queen size sheets. Yes, the sewing room please."
"A chintzy wedding present if you ask me," Dorothy said over her shoulder.
Anna waved that off. "Sometimes you need more than love to keep you warm...and my old bones say it's going to be an early, cold winter."
Garreth leaped at the chance that gave him to ask about Lane. "Let's hope not too severe to keep Mada from making it home for Thanksgiving."
Anna cocked a brow at him. "Garreth --- may I call you Garreth --- I wanted to talk to you yesterday but you --- "
His radio interrupted. "Baumen Seven, 10-47, Kansas and Maple."
Garreth silently cursed the interruption while rogering the call.
"And there you go off again," Anna said. "If you have a chance before it gets too late, will you come back? I do want to talk to you."
"I'll be back." One way or another.
The traffic accident proved to be a minor fender bender with both ladies involved apologizing to each other...without any influence on his part. Discretion prevented intervention with the parents of two juveniles caught trying to steal cigarettes at Rexall Drugs...two of the thirteen-year-old trio who stole brandy on Monday. But he did urge the store owner to press charges. Maybe juvenile court would shake sense into the idiots...or teach the parents to enforce grounding.
Impatient as he was to go back to Anna's, conscientiousness made Garreth hold off until after the stores closed and most of the cars left downtown. Some previous nights Anna's lights remained on after eleven. He just had to hope for that tonight, too.
The hope paid off. When he cruised past he found not only house lights on, but the porch light. She was waiting for him. He called in a break for himself and rang her bell.
The sidelight curtain twitched aside briefly, then Anna opened the door, smiling. "You did make it. Can you stay for a while?"
"I hope. I'm on break." He came in, tucking his cap under his arm. "What do you want to talk to me about?"
"Mada, of course. Come in the diningroom. I baked an apple pie this evening. Would you like some?"
No problem ducking this offer. "Thanks but I'm not a desert eater."
She sniffed. "I can see that. It wouldn't hurt to put a little more on your bones you know. Come in the diningroom anyway."
While he took a chair there and laid his cap on the table, she opened a lower door of a sideboard with a picture of the Virgin Mary hanging over it. "Did you find your grandmother?"
"No...but it doesn't matter anymore." Give her an acceptable reason for that. "Looking was...something to do while I sorted out a personal situation." Almost the truth. "Now it's resolved." With luck.
She turned holding a photo album. "Mary Catherine told me about saying Mada is probably your grandmother. I can assure you she isn't. Since it made enough sense that Mary Catherine might be right, the next time Mada called, I asked her straight out if she was Mary Pfeifer, or the visitor calling herself Maggie Bieber."
Garreth's stomach sank. He cursed silently. Lane knew about him. He could only hope she was unaware of him still being in town.
"Mada swore she has never been pregnant and never stayed at a boarding house in Sacramento. She also said she wasn't Maggie Bieber...because she'd have to give a damn about someone to visit them and back then everyone except Ben and me could go to hell as far as she was concerned."
"That's cold."
Anna sighed. "She was such an angry child." She laid the album in front of Garreth and opened it and flipped a couple of pages. "That's Mada in the middle."
The photograph showed three little girls sitting on the running board of a twenties-style touring car in front of a farm house --- fields lay visible off to one side behind it --- whose porch had a fan of gingerbread between posts and roof. The description Mrs. Armour gave of the photograph in Lane's bookcase sounded like a copy of this one.
"The other two are my daughter Mary Ellen, who's a eighteen months younger than Mada, and their cousin Victoria. Mada and Victoria were about seven then."
He studied the photo. "She's the same size as the others."
"Here's the school picture when she was nine."
No mistaking Lane now...towering a head above other children.
"Look at these." She turned pages to show him grade cards with all A pluses --- except for Deportment --- and certificates for First Place in spelling and debate, blue ribbons in Archery and Track. "Mada is the smartest of all my children. She won all those, but would have given them up in a moment to be six inches shorter. My heart ached for her so often. She would come home crying because the other children taunted her about her height. When we sent her to high school in town, she stopped crying. She developed a terrible temper, flying into a rage at the least remark. She was always fighting someone. That only made matters worse, of course. 'I hate them,' she would say to me, with such savagery in her voice. 'Someday they'll be sorry.' I'm so glad she's past that now."
Past anger because now she had her revenge.... living off people's blood, reducing them to cattle, leaving some of them nothing but dead, drained husks. When she had been bitten by the vampire who made her, whoever it had been, Garreth doubted she loathed what she became, as he did. He suspected she had seen instantly what the change would bring her and embraced hell willingly, even greedily. In her place, perhaps he would, too.
In sudden uncertainty, he closed the album. He wanted to understand how Lane's mind worked, the better to deal with her, not sympathize with her...not feel her pain.
"Is something the matter?" Anna asked.
He gave her a quick smile. "I was just thinking no wonder Mada ran away."
She laid her hand on his arm. "It wasn't all bad. We had happy times, too. It's still good when everyone's home together, once Mada relaxes. She's always upset at first by the things that have changed since her last visit. Once she said she wished she could stop time so everything and everyone here would stay the same forever. Her hugs almost crush me when she leaves again, and I see tears in her eyes. I think those exotic places she works don't make her happy."
Guilt pricked Garreth. Lane enjoyed coming home. Only this time, instead of a happy family reunion and holiday, she would find a cop waiting, a date with retribution and justice. Creating yet more victims, as the arrest wounded Anna and the rest of the family, especially when made by someone they had thought friendly.
"So I'm a little surprised she says that instead of coming home this year, why don't I come to her and spend the winter in Acapulco, where it's warm."
Dismay knocked out the guilt, like a shot to the gut. Lane not come here? Dodge the trap he had given up so much to set? "It would be warm. Are you going?"
She sighed "I don't know. I can't imagine Thanksgiving and Christmas away from my children and grandchildren. Maybe I'll go after Christmas."
Garreth forced a smile. "Let me know if you're going, and where you'll be staying. I'll send you postcards from the shivering north."
He worked the rest of his shift feeling sick and hollow. His head argued for calm. If Anna wanted to remain here through Christmas, Lane might still come home. But his gut felt otherwise. She knew he was still alive and looking for her, and even if Anna said nothing about him remaining in the area, Lane probably assumed he had notified local law enforcement to watch for her. She would not risk being seen here. Which meant he had to follow Anna to Mexico.
So at every call, guilt stabbed him. Staying on Lane's trail meant abandoning this job...violating an oath he had just taken. Deserting people who had taken a liking to the person they thought he was...who would be angered and hurt learning friendship and trust had been betrayed. I Ching reverberated in his head: Acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. Setting oneself up to alter things according to one's own judgement can end in mistake and failure. Was he guilty of just that...acting without authority, proceeding entirely according to his own judgement? Had he doomed himself to failure?
12
The questions still churned in his head when Garreth woke. He tried pushing them aside, telling himself just to wait and see what Anna did. Meanwhile, he had a job to do, a job that deserved to be performed to the best of his ability for as long as he could.
Stepping outside and hearing distant yells from the direction of the football stadium reinforced that thought. Oh, yes, the big Homecoming game against Bellamy. Kickoff was supposed to be at, what, seven? That meant light cruise traffic downtown now...turning crazy after the game. Especially if Baumen won. Maggie and Duncan had traded shifts for tonight, Garreth remembered. He looked forward to the contrast of working with Duncan.
An ear-splitting shriek greeted him coming up the hall at the station, Sue Ann, bouncing up and down in her chair, two fists pumping the air. "Yes, yes, yes!"
Garreth stared at her. She wore a Bride of Frankenstein wig and a Timberwolf tattoo on one cheek.
Nat looked up from a typewriter with a laconic smile. "TD by Baumen, answering the one Bellamy made five minutes into the game."
"How does she know --- " Garreth began.
Breaking off as Ed Duncan's voice, triumphant, came over the radio. "Extra point. Seven all. One minute to go in the quarter."
"Ed took a radio to the game with him."
Sue Ann still danced in her chair. "I told him to, so I'd know what's happening."
"KBEL is broadcasting the game," Nat said.
"KBEL!" Sue Ann blew a raspberry. "They're all about how wonderful the Cougars are! I don't give a damn about the Cougars...except whipping their asses! Go Timberwolves!" She threw back her head and howled.
Garreth shook his head. This was worse than home when Shane was playing. "I think you need to calm down, Sue Ann. You're making your hair go all frizzy."
She stopped and blinked at him, then patted the wig, giggling. "You like my new look?"
"It's over a week to Halloween isn't it?"
"This isn't a costume. It's part of my bridesmaid dress I picked up today and I thought I'd try out."
Now Garreth blinked. "Bridesmaid dress?"
"My cousin Julie is getting married on Monday so it's a Halloween theme wedding. Doris is switching shifts with me. We women are all Brides of Frankenstein, though Julie has even bigger hair than this, and the men are Draculas and the wedding cake is a Dracula Castle. Guests are invited to wear costumes, too. The wedding's at seven but Communion and Mass ought to be over by eight-thirty so come by the reception at the high school gym. It's going to be a blast!"
Nat said. "My wife Charly and I will be there with our dancing shoes on."
"Is Julie your niece, too?" Garreth asked.
"Jason, the groom, is my nephew." He cocked his head at Sue Ann. "What do you think...between the two of them, they're related to a third or better of Baumen?"
She laughed. "Probably."
A voice of sanity came over the radio. "Six Baumen. Requesting a 10-28 on local K-king, five-five-three." Maggie, running a car registration.
Before Nat finished going over wants and warrants and the day's activity with Garreth, the second quarter started. Garreth left with Sue Ann howling behind him as Baumen made a field goal.
He patrolled with Duncan's game updates coming over the radio, voice grudging when Bellamy scored, exultant when Baumen scored. Radios all over Baumen blasted out KBEL's broadcast...in the bars, in the Main Street, from cruising cars whose drivers and passengers had not gone to the game.
Despite trying to ignore it, Garreth found himself caught up in the game. Bellamy made its own field goal in the second quarter, so the half ended tied. Bellamy scored in the third quarter, to Duncan's disgust, but Baumen answered it in the fourth, tying the game and sending it into overtime. Where both teams made field goals. In the second overtime neither team made much progress, each defense digging in and holding ground until the other side had to punt. Then Bellamy managed to fight its way to the fifteen yard line and with one minute thirty seconds left in the game, lined up for a field goal. The excited KBEL announcer reported the kick was aimed straight between the uprights.
Until Baumen's Darrell Wiltz leaped skyward in a jump that, as Duncan described it later, matched anything by an NBA pro, and intercepted the ball. Darrell landed running, cut through the stunned Bellamy line, and with Duncan screaming into his radio, outran a Bellamy player who had shown phenomenal speed all night to score the TD. And to put a final flourish on the victory, they faked the kick for the extra point and one Benjamin Danzig ran it in for two points.
All along Kansas Avenue, wolf howls erupted from cruising cars. Garreth parked parallel to the tracks across from the Pizza Hut to monitor the traffic soon to be coming out of Poplar. Serk and Chuck George, another of their reserve officers, were directing traffic at the stadium. Maggie radioed that she would monitor 282. None of them needed clairvoyance to foresee a long, busy night.
Within minutes cars began appearing, some peeling off south onto 282 toward Bellamy, a few cutting across onto northbound 282, but most turning up Kansas...horns honking, occupants howling and waving Timberwolf flags out the windows.
About fifteen minutes into the exodus Garreth spotted a Ford F-150 with a Cougar banner stretched across the truck bed, the pole at each end of the banner stuck in the pickup's front stake pockets. Cougar fans, came his first thought, but two teenage males illegally standing in the back wore Timberwolf sweatshirts. They howled and waved middle fingers at a big Silverado following almost on the 150's trailer hitch. A passenger in the Silverado leaned halfway out the window shouting threats at the 150. In the seconds it took Garreth to guess the situation --- Cougar banner stolen and the teenage owners trying to recover it --- the two pickups shot across Kansas and gunned up 282...using excessive speed in addition to the other violations.
Garreth hit his mike button and radioed descriptions of the two vehicles to Maggie.
Shortly her voice came back: "I see them. Radar says...fifty-five."
In a forty-five zone.
"I'm lighting them up."
He expected her next transmission to be asking Sue Ann for registration and drivers license checks. Instead, Maggie came on with her voice high and urgent. "10-48 times three, at the Co-op! I need Fire Rescue!" He had already flipped on lights and siren and started forcing his way into the traffic when she finished with: "Possible 10-40."
Three vehicle accident with injuries and a fatality!
Once through the traffic onto 282, Garreth floored the accelerator.
The lights of Maggie's car flashed up 282 by the Co-op. Approaching, he saw the car parked behind the Silverado, with the F-150 sitting sideways across the southbound lane looking t-boned by a third vehicle. His first thought was to cut in at Gfeller Lumber and drive around the accident to block the southbound lane, but as he arrived the driver's doors of both pickups opened. The Silverado's driver staggered out and toward the 150, cursing, fists waving.
The 150's driver almost fell out of his vehicle, but caught the door and stayed upright...then dragged himself around the door to grab the pickup's hood for support, screaming, "Diane! Diane!"
"Garreth, stop him!" Maggie shouted from the far side of the 150.
First he need to stop the Silverado's driver, whose intent seemed to be bodily harm. He leaped out of his car into a flood of human and vehicle fluid smells...caught up to the driver and spun him. "Hey. Hey! Look at me! Stop. You need to lie down. Lie...down."
The driver's knees buckled.
Garreth eased him to the pavement. "Stay there."
Then he ran after the 150's driver...reaching him as the boy round the front of the truck, still yelling the girl's name. Beyond him, Garreth saw with dismay why Maggie wanted him restrained. A female sprawled on the hood of a Ford Fairlane with her head embedded in the windshield.
Inside the Fairlane a female passenger screamed hysterically, almost drowning the male voice trying to calm her. Maggie straightened beside the driver's window and headed for the bed of the 150.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
As Garreth dragged the boy back and turned him, to his further dismay he spotted a second motionless figure...this one male, lying on the highway several yards ahead of the Silverado, a dark stain spreading around his head.
Two fatalities? Damn!
He jerked his focus back to the boy whose arms he held and after capturing the boy's gaze, laid him down on grass beside the highway.
Maggie, having peered into the back of the 150, gave Garreth a thumbs up and ran for the passenger side of the Silverado.
Garreth checked the 150, too. A juvenile male lay curled in the truck bed, motionless but signaling life by whimpering, clutching the Cougar banner, which had torn loose from one pole.
"Passenger's alive but unconscious!" Maggie called from the Silverado, raising her voice above the nearing sirens.
The sirens announced Fire Rescue's arrival. Soon they had other assistance, too: two Bellamy SO deputies, one in uniform, the other in a Cougar sweatshirt with his badge pinned on the front, and Duncan in a Timberwolf sweatshirt, face painted blue and yellow. Duncan and a deputy set out flashing cones and diverted traffic from 282 to Kansas via cross streets north and south of accident. Sue Ann reported that Serk had moved from the stadium to handle traffic downtown.
Fire Rescue took the injured victims to St. Francis. The deputies left when the last of the injured victims were on their way to the hospital, the sweatshirted one agreeing to contact the families of the two Bellamy boys. Duncan disappeared about the same time. Leaving Garreth and Maggie photographing the fatalities --- named Diane Barnes and Jonah Wiltz --- so the wagon from Sterling-Weiss Funeral Home could transport the bodies to the hospital, too.
Looking after the Sterling-Weiss vehicle's departing tail lights, Maggie visibly braced herself. "I need to go notify our parents."
The grimmest job of the night. "Would you like me to come with you?" Garreth asked.
She hesitated only a moment before shaking her head. "I know them. You finish up here."
So he took final photos and measurements of the scene and made a rough sketch, watched while A-1 towed the vehicles, then helped them clean up debris and fluids, so he could finally pick up the cones and re-open the road.
Maggie radioed to join her at the hospital.
Taking the photos and accident scene diagrams from him, she tallied the injuries for him: James Coffey, driver of the Fairlane, broken ankle; Arlene Coffey, his wife, possible whiplash; Matt Schaller, driver of the 150, possible whiplash; Gary Canfield, passenger in the Silverado, concussion and frontal sinus fracture; Kenny Creager, the Silverado's driver, and Peter Barns, passenger in the 150 and brother of Diane Barns, under observation but apparently sustaining only contusions.
She had taken a statement from Mr. Coffey but was waiting until tomorrow for the rest. Mrs. Coffey, Matt, and Peter were all under sedation,and the parents of the Silverado's driver and passenger had not arrived yet. Matt and Peter's parents were here, devastated. Mrs. Barnes, Maggie reported, sat at her son's bedside weeping quietly but ceaselessly. Quietly forewarned about Diane's injuries, Mr. Barnes insisted he alone identify her...which he had done by her clothes and a necklace she wore, then needed fourteen stitches in his hand after punching out a window. Mr. and Mrs. Wiltz had been there to identify Jonah but now gone home, Mrs. Wiltz with sedatives.
All people Maggie knew. This had to be hard for her. Garreth said, "How are you doing?"
Her jaw went square. "I'm fine!"
Meaning, no but damn if she would admit it. He retreated to patrol.
Meeting with Serk to thank him for the help downtown, Garreth gave him details of the accident.
Serk shook his head sadly. "I worked plenty of fatalities in the Highway Patrol but the accidents involving young people always got to me the most. And this...such appalling consequences for a prank." He sighed. "There's one more victim we need to remember, too, Jonah's brother Darrell. Darrell made the football play of his life tonight, and now how can he ever enjoy the memory?"
A tragic ending for what should have been a night to celebrate.
Echoing that, Baumen settled into the silence of a graveyard. Walking Kansas, then cruising down random streets, all empty, Garreth felt like the last man on Earth.
Around two-thirty Doris radioed: "Can you come to the station?"
When he arrived, he found Maggie bent over a typewriter. He eyed her in surprise. "You haven't gone home yet?"
"I need to finish this accident report while everything is still fresh in my mind." Diamonds would have shattered on her voice.
Doris gestured him to her with a crooked finger and whispered, "She's been at it since one, but keeps tearing up forms and starting over. Can you do something?"
Maybe.
He walked back to her desk. "Maggie." He expected her to at least glance up so he could look her in the eyes. But her focus stayed on the typewriter. Might voice alone work? "You've been on duty over ten hours. Go...home. Finish...this...in...the...morning. Believe me, you'll still remember every detail."
The temperature dropped twenty degrees. "You're in my light."
Garreth shrugged at Doris and left. Frosted again.
So he never expected to find Maggie sitting on his stairs when he came home.
"I finished the report." Her tone challenged him...what, to apologize for doubting she could?
He kept his own tone casual. "But you still haven't gone home."
"I'm not tired." Still challenging him.
He recognized that syndrome...had been there. In fact she was probably exhausted but too wound up, too haunted, to sleep. In a bigger department she could have decompressed in a bar with a group of fellow cops. Here, now, she had only him.
He climbed past her and opened the door. "Then come in and have some tea."
Her nose wrinkled even as she followed him. "Tea!"
Not that tea interested him, either. What if he just went ahead and had his blood. His throat burned for it. How would she know what it was?
"I don't have anything stronger." Blame hunger for the impulse that made him add, "I never drink...alcohol."
She missed the Dracula reference. "Oh...recovering alcoholic?"
A reasonable assumption, he had to admit. "Alcohol allergy." He put two mugs of water with tea bags in the microwave. "Have a seat."
Instead, she paced. Several times she took a breath as though about to speak, then paced on. Not sure what she wanted to say....or how to start?
She needed a nudge. "You keep seeing it happen, right?"
She halted, eyed him, and dropped into a chair at the table, staring into the past. "Over and over, in slow motion. The Silverado pulling out around Matt to run from me, realizing there's an oncoming vehicle and trying to pull back in...but too soon, impacting at Matt's rear wheel. Matt spinning out...ejecting Jonah. Diane..." Maggie sucked in a breath. "Diane had been hanging out her window howling back at the Silverado. When the Fairlane t-boned Matt, she --- " Maggie choked...swallowed. "I heard her hit the windshield." Her tone went defensive. "It's wimpy, I know."
Was that what she thought? "Wimpy?" The microwave dinged. He set a mug in front of her. "Let's review this. You watched two kids you know die violently, but despite that you worked their accident and notified all the parents. Probably the toughest part of this job."
"I almost lost it at the parents'. The Wiltz' were having a party, celebrating the game and Darrell's play. The minute I said I needed to talk to them in private Floyd jumped to the conclusion the Bellamy boys had sworn out a complaint about their banner and started ranting at me for the stupidity of arresting Jonah over a prank. I wanted to put a bullet in the ceiling to make him shut up and listen to me!" Her hands tightened around the mug as if to crush it.
He knew that feeling. "But you didn't."
"Because Abbie realized I wasn't there about some stupid prank and she dragged Floyd outside!" Maggie shoved the mug away with a force that almost sent it off the table. "He wouldn't have given you or Duncan that shit!"
"I think he would. He sounds like he'd had a few beers, and maybe something stronger. In the face of which I'm confident you maintained your professionalism...as I saw you maintain it the rest of the night. So...wimpy? Hell...you've got bigger balls than a lot of cops I've worked with."
She stared at him as if stunned, then started to tremble. Garreth reacted as he had when reaction to a tough case at the hospital caught up with Marti. He circled the table to lift Maggie to her feet and put his arms around her.
The flood of her blood scent turned his hunger ravenous, the heat of it surging outward through him, including to his groin. Feeling himself harden, he let go and started to step back. "Shit, I'm sorry; I didn't mean --- "
Her arms locked around him. "No, no; it's..." She fairly lunged for his mouth, kissing him with violent, desperate urgency.
He recognized what drove her...had been there, too...using sex as an affirmation of life.
He gave her the affirmation, meeting her ferocity with his hunger goading him almost to savagery, as it had in San Francisco. Only this time he fought against biting, making the one penetration substitute for sinking his fangs into a vein.
Her convulsive release shattered all control and the tension, horror, and grief bottled up all night turned into wracking sobs. Garreth held her through the storm, and even after it spent itself and she slid into exhausted sleep. Ignoring hunger, he enjoyed the feel of a woman in his arms again.
Eventually she began shivering...with cold this time, her goosebumps told him. He lifted her to the couch from the pile of their discarded uniforms on the braided rug and tucked the afghan from the back of the couch around her. Then snatching the last bottle from the fridge, he headed to the bathroom for his robe, slugging down half the quart on the way.
Coming back shortly, to his surprise he found Maggie awake and struggling into her shirt and trousers. Minus underwear, which still lay on the rug.
"Maggie...what --- "
"I have to go." Without looking at him she jammed the underwear into her pockets and her feet into her shoes.
Was she so embarrassed by what happened? "No, please stay. I'll reheat the tea."
"I need a clean uniform." She scooped up her vest and was across the room and out the door.
He stared at the closed door. Shit. Was it something he did? Maybe going after his robe made her think he wanted to get away from her, though he had not just left her lying there on the rug. Did she think she would now be a locker room joke? Or did proving herself the equal of male officers make any softening unacceptable?
Not that the reason mattered, he reflected with a sigh. The result was probably a professional relationship back in the deep freeze for the rest of his time here.
13
Garreth woke to the smell of rain and sound of it drizzling on his balcony. No surprise; he smelled it coming during his blood run last night. Dressing for duty, he tried not to brood about Maggie. Whatever her attitude now, he would live with it. The nearing prospect of crumbling into dust after catching Lane here, or abandoning Baumen to follow Anna to Mexico, left no time to care about relationships anyway.
So it felt anticlimactic to reach the station and not see her typing up reports.
"Is Maggie still out?" he asked.
Nat looked up from going over reports. "Danzig let me send her home at six and order her to get some rest."
"God, yes!" Sue Ann said. "Then maybe we can live with her tomorrow. She ran registrations and DL's right and left..." Both arms waved in demonstration. "...and wrote up every blessed moving violation she caught, not cutting anyone slack. Rolling stop, pull over, buddy; jump the light, step out of the car; change lanes without signaling, your ass is grass; three miles over the speed limit, see you in court!"
Nat chuckled at Sue Anne's vehemence.
"Even pre-menstrual she's not that hard-nosed!"
That was harsh. "You can't blame her for being sensitive to moving violations today."
Sue Ann sighed. "I guess."
"Speaking of moving violations..." Garreth turned to Nat. "...what's the rain doing to cruising tonight?" For safety's sake, reducing it, he hoped.
Nat tapped reports into a neat stack. "The rain isn't a factor."
Garreth frowned at him. "Meaning what?"
"You'll see."
Once on patrol, Garreth saw. Whether there were fewer vehicles than usual, he could not say...because they used a single lane. No one passed, no one honked, no one leaned out a window to call to riders in another vehicle. With lights reflecting off wet metal and rain-slicked pavement, they followed the customary circuit around and around in silent single file, moving at the speed of a funeral procession. Including Scott Dreiling's Trans-Am. A few windows had the names Diane and Jonah painted on them.
Garreth parked on a railroad crossing to watch.
Before long, Duncan pulled up to his window. "Creepy, isn't it. I wonder when they planned this. There are vehicles with Bellamy High parking stickers, too."
"I don't think anyone planned it," Garreth said. "In '78, when Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk were assassinated in San Francisco, somewhere between twenty-five and forty thousand people spontaneously gathered in Castro Street and walked to City Hall in a candlelight vigil. They didn't plan; it just happened." He eyed the slow procession. "It almost makes you believe in a universal consciousness."
Duncan grimaced. "That sounds like California hippie mumbo-jumbo. But," he added, "I have to say the whole damn town has been like this today. God knows how Lebekov found those violations she wrote up. Come and see 282."
Garreth had seen plenty of these yard and streetside memorials before. Still, he followed Duncan out to the highway. And caught his breath.
The memorial stretched along both sides of the highway, in front of the Co-op, just short of blocking its entrance, and at Hammond's across the road. Piles of flowers, photographs wrapped in plastic against the rain, the inevitable candles --- doused by the rain except for several in small lanterns. Hand-painted signs with Jonah and Diane's names established the Co-op side as Jonah's and the Hammond side for Diane. Jonah's side included Timberwolf flags, a basketball jersey, and several basketballs; Diane's, photos of her sitting on a bay horse and bending around a big oil drum on the same horse, cowboy hats, plastic trophies, toy horses.
"Jonah was the Timberwolves' star guard," Duncan said. "My niece keeps begging my sister for a horse so she can barrel race like the Barnes girl. I guess she was good."
As Garreth pulled away, car lights appeared in his rear view mirror and stopped for a passenger to leave yet more flowers for Jonah. When he passed the Barnes and Wiltz houses later, lights shone from all the downstairs rooms and cars lined their streets. Everyone in town coming to offer condolences it looked like. Including Martin Lebekov. Garreth recognized the Caravan outside the Wiltz house...reminding him this was the second Wiltz death in a week.
Through the evening Garreth mused that the silent cruise did reflect the town mood, as Duncan said. Even in the bars. He took not one drunk and disorderly complaint. Either the usual weekend hard drinkers were doing so quietly or had gone somewhere livelier.
A whole town in mourning. It awed him. The Moscone/Milk murders had shaken San Francisco and produced that massive walk to City Hall, and brought thousands to view the bodies lying in state at City Hall, but it had not shut down the city. Once the cruise petered out, Duncan went off duty, and the bars closed, the graveyard silence of last night enveloped Baumen. Again he seemed the only living --- undead --- thing walking Kansas or driving through the rest of town. And the rain drizzled gently but steadily.
Like angels weeping.
Who had he heard say that? Probably Grandma Doyle.
Maybe the mood soaked into him, too. He just knew he finished the easiest shift of his career totally exhausted. So on reaching home and finding Maggie on his steps again, this time in civilian clothes, leaning against the garage sound asleep under her slicker, his first impulse was to slip up the stairs past her.
Instead he shook her awake. "Maggie."
She started, eyes widening and ears reddening. "Oh! Oh my god." She jumped to her feet.
"Are you all right?"
"Yes, fine! I was just walking and..." Her voice trailed off...casting for an excuse to be here?
He knew why she came...drawn by some vampire pheromone for luring prey. The reason Lane's one-night stands came begging for more. Even Velvet wanted another go with him, and prostitutes did not enjoy sex. And of course he had strained toward Lane's mouth in that alley, welcoming her lips, tongue, teeth.
"I mean," Maggie said hurriedly, "I needed to tell you we've cancelled the waffle and sausage feed. It's always a kind of celebration with family and friends and...I --- we --- just don't feel like --- Anyway, it's off." She started down steps. "I'll go now."
He blocked her with an arm. "Please don't. Come in."
"No!" She shoved at his arm. Her voice tightened. "I'm not looking for another pity fuck!"
Was that her assessment of it. Why did she beat up on herself? "Did you ever consider I might have needed last night as much as you did?" Maybe he did, remembering how good it felt holding her afterward.
"I didn't need..." she began heatedly, then broke off to frown suspiciously at him. "You...?"
Could he stand ripping open the old wound for her benefit? "My wife died in a traffic accident last year. Sometimes you need to be reminded you're alive." More or less.
Maggie caught her breath. "Your wife... I'm so sorry. I didn't know." Instantly sympathetic.
He nodded. "Let's have tea."
A hand under her elbow steered her up the steps and inside, where they hung their slickers on the coat rack. He put mugs of water in the microwave again and --- oh, hell, he might as well --- reached into the fridge for blood.
"What's that?" she asked.
Of course she would ask. "A liquid protein health and energy drink." Deal with this head on. Avoid any suggestion of furtiveness. "Try some." He poured a little into a glass.
She swirled the glass and sniffed. "It looks like blood."
Jump in with both feet. "It has beef blood in it." When she wrinkled her nose he said, "There are African tribes who drink a blood and milk mixture as a regular part of their diet. But it is an acquired taste."
She sipped, grimaced, and pushed away the glass. "It isn't a taste I want to acquire."
Which should make his supply safe from further curiosity on her part. She had not even asked where the beef blood came from.
He finished off the blood in the glass, to her obvious disgust, then brought her tea from the microwave and sat down with his. "Look, last night we...comforted each other. Think of it like that." She started to speak, to protest, from her expression, and he cut her off with: "It's a human need. I know an ex-hooker in San Francisco who made very good money in World War II meeting that need for soldiers and sailors on leave or shipping out maybe to die. So what happened doesn't reflect weakness in you. Like I said before, you have bigger balls than many cops I've known. Or were you afraid I'd write your name on the restroom wall."
She went bright red. "I...ah...I...no, I never thought anything like that."
He smiled at her. "For a cop you're a terrible liar. But I understand, since you don't know me well enough to have a better opinion of me than that."
The red deepened. "I'm sorry. I guess I should get to know you better."
"I'd like that."
She eyed him for several moments, then suddenly stood, with the look of someone acting before she lost her nerve, and unbuttoned her jeans. "These are wet. Can I dry them before I leave?"
Even given the vampire lure, that surprised him. Still, to be a gentleman, he should rise to the occasion, right? He stood, too. "Do you need help out of them?"
This time they unfolded the bed, and in comfort, proceeded slowly, exploring each other. Though they ended as fiercely and explosively as last night.
"Wow!" Maggie collapsed on him. "Wow!" Rolling off, she snuggled against him. "Yee-haw."
It had to be the vampire thing. Not even Marti, unstinting in her enthusiasm, ever gave him a wow yee-haw. Nice to know unlife had one benefit.
He did not remember falling asleep, but woke near sunset to find a note by the pillow. Your energy drink certainly seems to work for you. It may not be to my taste but you are. I think, and hope I'm not misjudging you again, that we need to "comfort" each other regularly. And maybe even find a time we can go on an actual date. I tried waking you before I left for Mass, but you were dead to the world. I could hardly tell you were breathing. See you at the station. Maggie.
14
She saw him...but other than giving him a warm and breezy greeting --- countering the continued drizzle outside --- said nothing hinting at last night, nor indicated any change in their relationship with her body language. Then she came out of the locker room with her purse and paused to eye Nat, standing at the forms rack dropping reports into the Return To Officer box.
"I never noticed before, Sarge, but you have a nice butt. Yours isn't bad either, Mikaelian."
And took off down the hall, out the rear entrance.
Nat and Sue Ann stared after her. Garreth made himself do likewise while grinning inwardly. Nice move, making him an "afterthought" in her wisecrack. He had no trouble accepting the way she wanted to play this. Around here he doubted it could be kept quiet long, but when they were found out, Maggie might be ready for the smart remarks and tasteless practical jokes sure to follow.
"That's a first," Nat said. "I wonder what got into her."
"Or who," Sue Ann said.
Garreth ticked his tongue. "Don't tell me you think getting laid is the answer to whatever ails a woman."
"Yes," she shot back, "...and for whatever ails a man, too. I know it's always good for my Leland's tension." She wiggled her brows, then narrowed her eyes at him. "Wouldn't hurt you, either, Garreth."
"I'll keep that in mind," he said, and escaped before she saw more than he wanted.
Rain continued until about three, giving him another quiet shift. With Maggie waiting for him in the dark in his apartment when he reached home.
She blushed. "Helen Schoning stopped me outside the municipal court today and gave me a key. She said she's afraid I'll catch pneumonia on the steps. I'll give it back if you don't want me to have it."
He considered. The idea of anyone being able to walk in while he slept and was vulnerable chilled him. But was that any different than letting himself go to sleep with her still there? "Keep it."
Only when she sighed did he realize she had been holding her breath waiting for his answer. "Helen also asked if you will please drive your car to work tomorrow, even if it isn't raining, and park on her side of the drive when you come home. Why?"
"So a friend can use the garage."
Her eyes widened. "A --- Helen is --- "
"As entitled to her privacy as I'm sure she feels we are. So you can be reassured no one will hear about us from her just as I never look to see if I know her friends' cars. Now, how do you rate the rest of the butts in the BPD?"
15
It rained again for his Monday shift. Maggie did not come over and the bed already felt empty without her.
Tuesday dawned with a clear blue sky, crisp autumn air, and leaves glowing incandescent yellow and red. Tuesday Baumen buried Diane and Jonah.
Garreth made himself wake up and attend the funerals. Not exactly ordered to, but the memo Danzig posted on Monday made his feelings clear.
I think it would be a mark of respect, and demonstration that this department's regard for accident victims and their families goes beyond working those accidents, if as many officers as possible attend the Barnes and Wiltz services, in uniform. My family and I will be there.
So Garreth made sure he was, too...uniform crisp, gear belt polished. And went well fed to curb hunger amid all that blood scent. They held Jonah's service in the morning. PD officers and their families sat in a block. Counting noses --- Danzig, Lieutenant Kaufman, Nat, Maggie, Duncan --- Garreth wondered who was minding the store besides Bill Pfannenstiel.
Reserve Officer Chuck George it appeared, who drove the patrol car leading the procession from the packed First Christian Church to Mount of Olives cemetery.
Diane's service came in the afternoon, at the equally crowded St. Thomas More Catholic church...where a horse blanket covered with show ribbons, mostly blue or purple, draped the casket. Pfannenstiel replaced Duncan in the PD contingent, though Garreth spotted the woman and teenage girl who had attended Jonah's funeral with Duncan --- his sister and the niece who wanted to barrel race like Diane --- elsewhere in the congregation. He sat next to Maggie. During the service, her hands and jaw clenched with the effort of keeping her composure. He put a hand over the near fist, and her hand turned to interlace fingers tightly with his. Beyond her, Garreth saw Martin Lebekov notice and smile.
Since the cemetery lay just across from the church, they had no vehicle procession. Everyone walked. Sterling-Weiss had a vintage buckboard waiting in front of the church, draped in black. It carried the casket, still covered by the horse blanket, across to the cemetery. Followed by a bay horse tacked in western saddle and bridle with cowboy boots turned backward in the stirrups like a military funeral, then the rest of the mourners. At the grave site, John and Anita Sterling folded the horse blanket and presented it to Diane's parents like a flag.
Garreth did not see a dry eye in the house, including his.
Maggie had the bed unfolded when he reached home after his shift. Not for sex this time, but to cuddle against him and talk about the pain of losing her mother to breast cancer when Maggie was fifteen. Holding her, he thought of his father accusing him of burying himself here. There were, he reflected, far worse places to be buried.
16
Wednesday, their dead buried, the majority of Baumen began moving on. Halloween decorations disappeared from yards. Scott Dreiling resumed driving just short of violations and pushing his home curfew. The real flowers in the memorials on 282 wilted. Nat handed Garreth a memo from Danzig. The department was beginning to receive requests for the home security checks Garreth had volunteered to perform, so he needed to make appointments with the citizens whose names and addresses appeared on the bottom of the memo.
He groaned. Gaining access to Baumen homes seemed hardly worth the effort now, no longer than he was likely to be here, but...he better play his role to the end. With the sun setting about six-thirty now, late afternoon and early evening inspections should not be too uncomfortable.
Before going out on patrol, he called the citizens and made appointments for the next three days, then spent the rest of the week being invited into dwellings before going on duty, working his shift, riding herd on the now-normal Friday/Saturday cruises...and except for Saturday night, coming home to find Maggie waiting for him.
A Maggie who wanted to talk as much as have sex. Fine by him. Marti, too, had liked to talk. As then, he was content to listen, since it came without Judith's implied You will be tested later. With Maggie he definitely preferred listening over, say, answering questions about Grandma Mikaelian. The trouble with lies was remembering what he said about her bogus death and Depression era boarding house.
While the apartment and bed felt lacking without Maggie, solitude did let him force himself to sleep so he could drag out for Maggie and Martin's waffle and sausage feed in the morning. Arriving in dark glasses and his cowboy hat to fend off the bright autumn day, he found a crowd in their back yard similar to get-togethers at his parents', except with fewer cops...just Nat and his family, Bill Pfannenstiel, and Sue Ann. Once Maggie handed him a plate of waffles and sausage and introduced him to everyone --- Martin's VFW buddies, fellow members of St. Thomas More, a gaggle of aunts and uncles, plus Pfannenstiel's wife and a soft-spoken hulk and a female toddler who turned out to be Sue Ann's husband and daughter --- he further resisted daylight by sitting on the ground under a big cottonwood tree. There he cut the waffle and sausage into small bites and pretended to eat, while surreptitiously sneaking the pieces to four dogs who came with other guests but gravitated to him.
Looking around, it did not surprise him how many of the faces looked familiar from seeing them around town, nor that he had met two of the aunts without knowing their relationship to Maggie. He ran security checks at their houses on Friday. It would not have surprised him, given the town's interlinking kinships, to find Anna here, too. He sat feeding the dogs and brooding about her. If only she were here, since he had been unable to arrange an encounter this week...not seen her in her yard nor out shopping on Thursday. With the weather appearing to bear out her prediction of an early, cold winter --- temperatures crisp by day, dipping near freezing at night --- he needed to know how that was affecting her thoughts about Acapulco.
Familiar blood and skin scents announced Maggie's approach. She grinned. "Are all of us so overwhelming that you're driven to a retreat with dogs?"
"No, I'm fine, just savoring the sausage. My compliments to your Uncle Leo." He held up his fork with one of the last bites on it.
"Since that's the case..." She brought more sausage.
To the dogs' delight.
Settled against the tree and earth, he started to doze, when a boy's voice roused him. "Blue doesn't usually take to strangers." One of Nat's sons, staring at the Blue Heeler with its head on Garreth's knee and along with the other dogs, mournfully eyeing the empty plate.
Yes, what was it with dogs and him. The thought prompted a joke reply. "It's a kinship thing. He senses my secret identity as a werewolf."
"Is that how you're going to the wedding? I always thought weddings were boring but Dad says this one will be cool. Mark and I get to go trick and treating first and then wear our costumes to the wedding. I'm a Jedi."
"I can't go; I'm on duty."
"Too bad."
An opinion everyone at the station seemed to share when he came in Monday for duty.
Nat urged him to at least drop by the reception. "That's where I'm catching up with Charly and the boys after I go home and change."
Doris, looking bonier than ever in a witch's costume complete with pointed hat, said, "You could bring me back a piece of the cake, maybe a piece of a tower, and tell me all about what everything looks like."
"Are you going?" Garreth asked Maggie.
She shook her head. "I'd feel awkward since I wasn't invited, but your uniform will look like just another costume. I'm going home to help Dad with the trick and treaters."
He had seen the small forms as he walked to the station...tramping along the dark sidewalks undeterred by the appropriately heavy mist--- Jedis and witches, ghosts, fairy princesses, a Crayon box, a TV set --- glow sticks and loot bags in hand, followed by parents with flashlights. With trick and treaters calling Anna to her door, this might be a good night to catch her.
If Halloween mischief did not keep him busy elsewhere.
"How much vandalism should I anticipate dealing with?"
Nat and Maggie exchanged considering looks. Nat said, "There's not usually too much and it's rarely serious. Decorations knocked over, pumpkins smashed...at least one yard hit with toilet paper, usually a high school teacher's. Soap or shaving cream on car and store windows."
"Last year someone we never identified used a caulking gun on windows downtown," Maggie said.
"With three different colors of caulk." Nat grinned. "They were actually kind of artistic designs."
Maggie frowned. "The store owners didn't appreciate them. One year when I was still dispatching we had tombstones tipped over and spray painted."
"So keep your eyes open," Nat said, "but use your judgement in dealing with the situations."
Doris added, "Drive careful later. We've got a frost warning tonight."
That could be a good thing, Garreth reflected, pulling on a jacket as he left the station. This mist freezing on mischief-inclined goblins might drive them indoors to warmth. The temperature was already dropping. Faint puffs of breath preceded him on his checkout walk around the patrol car.
Leaving the parking lot, he headed straight for Anna's. If he wanted to catch her, he better try before parents took their chilly trick and treaters home. But to his disappointment, Anna appeared to be out. Only the light over the side door was on...not the front porch's nor those in the front rooms. Lady Luck had frowned at him this week.
Cruising back down Pine, he passed the high school. Light shone inside the windows around the top of the gymnasium and streamed out through open double doors. A delivery van with Carolyn's Catering and a Bellamy address and phone number on its side sat backed up to the doors...getting ready for the wedding reception.
He rolled on to Kansas Avenue...cruised down to the Pizza Hut and then north to Sonic. They had a few cars yet in their parking lots, and more vehicles parked around the Brown Bottle and VFW revealed customers and members there. Otherwise, very little stirred downtown. He crossed the tracks and started back south, mist turning the streetlights and the stoplight ahead of him fuzzy.
No...something stirred. A roar of loud pipes and chorus of haunted house shrieks came at him from the far end of Kansas. The pipes he recognized: Scott Dreiling's Trans Am.
As the car neared him, he saw Scott had attached an oval device to its grill with lights inside flashing in sequence, giving the impression of a single light sweeping side to side...making the Trans Am look like KITT from Knight Rider. In honor of the season, Scott and a buddy in the passenger seat wore skull masks, with the passenger waving a plastic scythe out the window. Giving Garreth a one-finger salute, Scott gunned up Kansas --- unfortunately holding his speed at twenty --- squeaked through the traffic light on yellow, and trailing the shrieks, shot on north into the mist.
Garreth guessed Scott would turn onto River Road and take it to 282. While he debated heading that way himself to see if Scott still stuck to the speed limit there, Duncan came on the radio, voice oddly muffled.
"Five Baumen, I'm 10-14, Signal S."
The ten code meant escort, but...Signal S? They had no such code...did they? Garreth thumbed his mike. "Clarify, Five. Signal S?"
Duncan shot back: "Shivaree, city boy! If your twenty isn't Kansas, get yourself there."
Moments later the blare of multiple car horns erupted to the south.
The wedding!
Garreth parked on the Oak Street crossing.
Shortly, Duncan's car crossed the tracks at Poplar and turned up Kansas, light bar flashing. Followed by three black convertibles with tops down, then a string of cars with lights and flashers on, horns honking. A whooping Bride of Frankenstein and Dracula stood up in the rear of the first convertible, seemingly oblivious to the weather...her voluminous nightgown-looking dress, his cape, and their breath billowing around them. The next two held bridesmaids of Frankenstein and more Draculas, also standing up and yelling, and also ignoring the cold.
When Duncan passed him, Garreth saw the reason for the muffled voice: Duncan wore a Darth Vader helmet.
Between whoops, the bride and groom reached into a carton on the car's seat and threw out handfuls of wrapped candy...onto the sidewalk, at parked cars, in the driver's window of two cars they passed, and onto the railroad crossing where he sat. A glance out the window spotted candy kisses, some wax lips, and candy eyeballs beside the patrol car. In the bridesmaids' car, Sue Ann jumped up and down, waving wildly, calling his name and screaming like a teenager.
The shivaree made two full noisy circuits, the bride and groom throwing out more and more candy as the horns and yelling drew customers and members out of the Sonic, Pizza Hut, Brown Bottle, and VFW. Three quarters of the way through the third circuit, they turned off at Pine. Heading for the reception.
Garreth grinned after them. That had been entertaining. It looked like a fun wedding indeed, and maybe he would look in on the reception.
Right now, Doris jerked him back to the job, sending him to see a Lawrence Ashe, whose Halloween tombstones had been painted with his own name...more or less. He found the actual new red lettering read: Lard Ashe. Neatly painted, Garreth noted, taking Polaroids...nice controlled spray with artistic flourishes around it in gold.
Breathing down Garreth's neck as he took the photographs, Ashe grumbled, "I expected a low crime rate in a town this size."
"It's Halloween, Mr. Ashe."
And the high school parking sticker on the car in Ashe's driveway suggested the identity, or at least the approximate age, of the prankster.
"A man still has a right not to have his property destroyed!"
Garreth stayed polite. "I don't think you have permanent damage. Talk to Mark Wiesner at Sherwin Williams downtown about how to remove the paint." Much less trouble, for example, than hooking sodden toilet paper out of the big oak in Ashe's yard.
"But I want this vandal found and punished! What are you going to do to find him?"
That attitude killed all inclination to suggest a student was responsible. Ashe would likely make finding him --- or her --- a personal mission, turning the school upside down in the process. "Let me talk to your neighbors."
Canvassing them --- securing him entry into several more dwellings --- located one who saw someone in Ashe's yard, but happily she could only describe the costume, the Grim Reaper.
That news did not please Ashe. "There has to be some way to find him."
His portable radio clicked. Duncan said, "Seven, 10-43 high school. Code R."
Being cute again. If he wanted to meet at the high school, Code R must mean Reception. But it offered an escape from Ashe.
He rogered the call and told Ashe, "We'll stop Grim Reapers and check them for paint cans."
Small chance of finding an armed Reaper, Garreth figured, but it placated Ashe.
At the high school, Duncan, still in his Darth Vader helmet, stood by his car. "I am your father, Luke," he intoned, "and I tell you it's criminal to miss what's inside." His voice returned to normal. "You gotta at least take a look. I'll mind the store."
After watching the shivaree, Garreth had to admit to curiosity about the reception.
A blast of sound and blood scent greeted him when he stepped through the gym door...the roar of overlapping voices, laughter, some whooping...and even louder than the voices, music: "The Time Warp" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. A DJ's sound table sat on a stage at the far end of the gym, the DJ himself dressed as a zombie. Under a ceiling of a monstrous black spider centered in an even more monstrous black and orange crepe streamer web, dancers in line dance formation sang along as they followed the song's directions --- led by the groom and bride, whose dress now had a shingling of green...money pinned to it. A jump to the left, a step to the right, hands on the hips. On the stage, the DJ danced to the music, too. Garreth spotted Nat and Charly in the middle of a line, costumed as an Old West marshal and dance hall floozie, doing the pelvic thrusts with enthusiasm.
Garreth tore his vision from that to go check out the cake. Half of it had been sliced up, but enough remained to recognize a castle. Cake slices and punch bowls with skull-shaped cups flanked it, while a generous buffet spread down the table next to it, tended by a cowboy and French maid.
The music ended in cheers from the dancers.
Nat and Charly came over to him, panting a little. "Quite a bash, huh." Nat raised his voice to be heard. "Try the punch. The orange, not the blue; it's unleaded. The eyeballs are edible and not bad tasting. I think this will count as the wedding of the year, and probably acquire mythic proportions in memory."
Charly laughed. "Exactly what Naomi, mother of the bride, is afraid of. Look at her." She pointed at a table across the dance floor. "That has to be the stiffest upper lip in history. She's been planning the perfect fairytale wedding since Julie was born and I'd love to have been a fly on the wall the day Julie announced her and Jason's plans. I have it on good authority Julie delivered that news with an ultimatum to cut off Naomi's histrionics: my way or the highway...threatening to elope."
Garreth followed the direction of Charly's finger, but instead of the bride's mother, he saw Mary Catherine Haas and Anna Bieber at the next table. Oh, yes, last week she said something about making a wedding present. "How is Anna Bieber related to the couple?"
"She's Jason's great-grandmother," Nat said.
"Then you're related to Anna, too?"
"Only by marriage. Her son Jacob married my father's sister Alicia."
The DJ picked up a mike. "Now, folks, radio Z-O-M-B-I brings you music directly from the Mos Eisley Cantina! Please secure the safety on your weapons before entering the dance floor." Music started again, this time the bar music from Star Wars.
Charly grabbed Nat's arm. "I love this. Come on, twinkletoes. Dancin' time!"
They charged back onto the dance floor.
Garreth circled around it to Anna's table. "Good evening, Anna. So this was the wedding you mentioned. Do Julie and Jason like the flannel sheets?"
"Very much. Let me introduce you around...if you can hear me. Everyone, this is Garreth Mikaelian, the young man who came hunting his grandmother. You know Dorothy and my sister Mary Catherine. This is another daughter Emily, and Martina, wife of my son Edward, and Leona, wife of my son David. And this is someone I think you'll be especially interested to meet...my daughter Mada."
His pulse leaped, thoughts ricocheting from amazement --- Lane still came, and early! --- to panic over how to handle her here, in a crowd with her family. Until he saw where Anna pointed. Then his gut plunged in dismay. He stared across the table at a total stranger...at a ruined face, stretched so much by face lifts no elasticity remained, only a tight mask looking more like plastic than skin.
Mada was not Lane.
"She decided to surprise us by coming for the wedding. Isn't that nice?"
His face felt frozen into stone. Smiling used all his will, so did keeping his voice normal. "Very nice." Somehow he also forced out a polite greeting to the woman. Not Lane. The words reverberated in his skull.
She nodded, murmuring a reply lost in the din of music and voices.
At a loss what to say or do next, he retreated...held his radio to his ear and shouted at Anna, "I've got to go. You all enjoy the reception."
In the car he leaned his forehead on the steering wheel. "You're totally screwed up," Serruto had said. He was...but where did he go wrong? His mind churned. The shark's tooth and postmark led him here. That was Lane's picture in the high school yearbook and in Anna's photo album. How could Mada not be Lane?
Someone rapped on the passenger window. He looked over to see Mada outside. Though he just wanted to get the hell away, he ran down the window. "May I help you?"
She smiled. "I'm hurt, Inspector; don't you don't recognize me?"
The voice jolted him like electricity. Lane's voice! He peered more closely at her. Those were Lane's eyes in that travesty of a face.
Before he could find his voice, she climbed into the car. "Didn't you come all this way to find me? Now you have. Where do we go from here?"
17
Lane's question had a simple answer...San Francisco, so she could stand trial. But he found himself saying, "That's an interesting makeup job."
She sniffed. "Well, I can hardly come home looking eighteen, can I. The old-face prosthetics used for movies don't look real in everyday light. Faking a bad facelift works, though. People don't want to look too closely. I didn't recognize you, either, until Mama introduced you. I could hardly believe it when she told me about you showing up in Baumen, let alone her bombshell that you had joined the local police. I had to come home and see for myself. How did you find Baumen?"
"I'll tell you all about it on the way back to San Francisco."
Her forehead twitched in a movement that without the restricting prosthetic might have been raised brows. "Are we going back to San Francisco?"
He made his voice flat. "I'm arresting you for the murders of Mossman and Adair, and my attempted murder."
She laughed. "Really? Point one, I did not try to kill you."
"Yes you did."
She considered...shrugged. "Well, yes, I did...but then chose to let you live."
"You left me bleeding to death."
"Not to a permanent death."
Anger flared in him. "You knew what would happen to me!"
"Of course. Point two, Inspector...how will you take me back?"
He frowned. How did she think? "There's a warrant for your arrest. Extradition will be arranged and you'll --- "
She hissed, interrupting him. "Are you that dense? I mean, by what means will you force me to accompany you and how will you imprison me: rose stem handcuffs? A cell with garlic on the bars? May I remind you that anything used against me hurts you equally, if you can even convince your law enforcement colleagues to agree to such nonsense."
He stared at her. What an idiot he was...so focused on finding her he never considered the problems afterward! He could not just let her walk away, though. There must be a way to handle her.
That fish symbol torn from Mossman's neck suggested an answer. "Maybe I can wrap your wrists in a rosary."
She snorted. "Superstition."
Superstition? Before she snorted, Garreth caught the beginning of a flinch. The crucifix Anna wore, another on the wall of her livingroom wall, and that picture of the Virgin Mary in the diningroom told him Lane had been brought up Catholic...and her involuntary flinch said its symbols affected her.
"Open your eyes, Inspector. You can't arrest or try me. Our kind are beyond the reach of mere human laws."
"No." He shook his head. No one could be beyond the law. Without law there was only chaos.
Opposing feelings warred in him...his belief in justice against the obvious impossibility of following proper procedure. He must violate the latter to accomplish the former, and that itself violated what his badge said he stood for. He would not be acting with proper authority.
His radio crackled. "Baumen Seven," Doris said, "see Mr. John Haffener, 723 Prairie Circle, about vandalism."
Reflex made him respond... "10-4."...but he hesitated with his hand on the ignition key. How could he take the call and still deal with Lane?
"I believe you're being paged," she said. "Since I'm sure you don't want me out of your sight, why don't I ride along." She buckled her seat belt.
I Ching echoed in his head. The maiden is powerful. Beware.
She obviously saw his uncertainty. Her lip curled. "How paranoid of you. Do you really think I'm stupid enough to try something in my hometown, where everyone sees everything? Where my mother would know about it? I won't foul her nest. I don't even hunt here."
He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. "How do you eat?"
"In Hays. Even during the holidays there are young men around the college campus eager to pick up an attractive girl and demonstrate what superstuds they are. I wear my own face there, of course."
"Do you kill any of them?"
Her eyes went cold. "You can be so tediously one-track. No, I don't kill them. Hays isn't that far from home. Now, let's talk about something more interesting...like the senses." She leaned her head out her open window and blew. The steam of it swept away behind them. "Fairy wreaths my cousin Vicky used to call this. I think the temperature's near freezing."
He thought so, too, feeling the tires want to slide at a stop sign.
"I used to hate cold. Now it doesn't bother me. I'm not crazy about heat, but can certainly bear it better than before. Don't you find that true? And doesn't the world have so many more odors since crossing over? Isn't it also wonderful being able to see in the dark?"
Questions he truthfully had to answer yes, but admitting it aloud felt like a trap. He drove in silence past the stadium to Prairie Circle.
The vandalism became immediately obvious...a smashed jack-o-lantern halfway up the driveway with a dark substance spreading from it toward the street. He got out. "Are you going to wait in the car?"
Lane smiled...more a grimace with that face. "Of course. We have so much yet to talk about."
Her amiability raised the hair on his neck. She must have something in mind for him. The maiden is powerful.
Trying to guess her plan, Garreth barely listened to the victim while they surveyed the driveway. His flashlight showed the substance as red; his nose identified it as paint. Latex, he thought, squatting down and picking at one edge. It might just peel off, especially with damp concrete under it.
Then a name Haffener said rang a bell in his brain, Marvin Jacobs. He stood. "Two weeks ago Mr. Jacobs was the victim of vandalism, too. Someone scratched 'bastard' on the hood of his car outside the Cowboy Palace."
"I don't know anything about that." An answer that came too quickly.
Garreth caught Haffener's gaze and violated his freedom from self-incrimination. "Why did you key Jacobs' car?"
"There was a set of golf clubs at an estate auction I wanted to bid on. One was supposedly signed by Jackie Gleason. They were scheduled to sell about two o'clock...only Jacobs talked the auctioneer into putting them up an hour earlier, before I got there, and bought them himself. And bragged about it at the Cowboy Palace."
It sounded like their beef went back farther than the golf clubs. Whatever the origin, it needed to stop before escalating any farther. "I'll talk to Mr. Jacobs and see if he will admit to painting your driveway. If so, I could arrest you both for vandalism but do you really want the embarrassment of going to court? I think you should offer to pay for repairing his paint job, and I will have him come tomorrow and clean your driveway. Then I want this...feud done with. I don't want to see either of your names on this type of complaint again, understood, or I won't hesitate to haul you downtown...in handcuffs...in full view of your neighbors."
Haffener winced.
So did Jacobs when Garreth obtained an admission of guilt there, too, and presented him with the same threat of public humiliation.
"I see you employ our very useful hypnotic ability," Lane said after Garreth returned to the car and sat writing up his preliminary report...the final one to be typed at the office.
He wrote on without replying.
"How about sex?" she said. "Ah, I see you have discovered the joy of vampire sex. Isn't it interesting we still blush. We're honey for flies, and what sex as humans ever compared to what it's like when we're hungry?"
The purr in her voice rasped at him. He laid down his clipboard and slapped the car in gear, pulling away from the curb with a jerk. "Your point?"
"Isn't that obvious? Look at all we are...our superiority, our abilities. Why would anyone want to be a mere human when they can be...us."
"Because family and friends are worth more." He made no attempt to hide his bitterness. "Now I've lost them. Every moment with them is a lie. Which isn't a problem for you, is it, since you never cared about anyone except your mother."
"None of them except her ever cared about me," she said coldly.
"So you probably asked to come across."
She snapped, "Yes!"
"How did you find a vampire?"
Lane smiled. "Irina found me...Vienna, July, 1934. It really wasn't the place to be that month with Hitler's putsch and Dollfuss's killing, but Matthew said as long as the cafes and museums stayed open what were politics to us. This exquisite woman sat down sat at a table next to us that evening and started flirting with Matthew. Naturally I went over to tear her face off."
That sounded familiar. "Like you attacked Claudia Darling?"
In his peripheral vision she blinked. "Who?"
"Your 1942 assault victim."
Lane sniffed. "Oh, that slut. I should have killed her. You know what she did after getting me arrested?"
"Got you fired and then blackballed around North Beach. She told me."
"You've seen her? Well...how is the little bitch these days?"
"Matronly and rich."
Lane laughed. "Whereas I am anything but matronly and am very rich."
His skepticism must have shown on his face.
Her forehead twitched. "Oh, yes, I am. You can learn a lot during pillow talk about making your money grow, especially with a little vampire encouragement. Which brings me back to Irina. Garreth, park somewhere so we can talk face to face."
"Eye to eye?"
She sighed. "You are paranoid. We'll sit back to back if that makes you feel --- no, not here! Turn right."
Into the cemetery, not St. Thomas More's parking lot. So she disliked being even in the vicinity of a church?
"Let's go to the War Memorial," she said.
A tall granite obelisk in the middle of the cemetery with cannons on its left and right pointed at the obelisk. Erected in 1920 to commemorate the Great War, which everyone optimistically assumed would be the Last War.
He steered into the cemetery, radioing Doris his location, and parked at the Memorial's island. Swinging out of the car, Lane strolled through the mist toward the obelisk. He climbed out, too, but remained beside the car.
Her voice came back to him. "Irina looked up at me with big violet eyes and said don't be angry, join her for tea. Suddenly I wasn't angry. Matthew and I did join her. Later she came back to our hotel with us and suggested we have a threesome...which Matthew accepted eagerly, of course. I don't have to tell you how fantastic it was. But the most amazing part came after she told me to go to sleep and she and Matthew went at it again by themselves. I didn't sleep --- maybe she was in too much hurry to be sure of me --- so I watched them...and I saw what she did. She doesn't bite the neck, where the marks show. She prefers --- let's just say she gives a whole new meaning to the term 'cocksucker.'"
Garreth cringed.
As though seeing him, Lane laughed. "I'm joking. That would be like drinking from a sponge with a soda straw. She goes for the femoral artery. The moment those fangs came out, I knew what I'd been born for! She tried sneaking away, thinking we were both asleep, but I ran after her and asked her to bring me across. She refused, then said she could help me be a happier human if I would agree to be her companion and run her daylight errands. I accepted though I didn't believe I could be happy as a human. She said don't regret you're not cuddly; think of yourself as an Amazon queen. She taught me how to move, how to dress, bought singing lessons. I appreciated it all, but it wasn't enough and I kept begging to be brought across. Finally I wore her down. Then, suddenly..." Lane's tone went acid. "...she turned into this old lady, acting every bit her four hundred plus years. Nagging me just to drink, not kill, because that attracts attention."
"It does."
"Not if you make the kills look the work of a psycho or wild animal or cult, which I did. But she got so angry she threatened me, and might have tried destroying me if we hadn't gotten separated in Warsaw when Hitler invaded." She paused. "Blitzkrieg isn't just a word when you've lived through it."
"I can imagine it was terrible."
"Not really." She ran her hand down the engraved names on the obelisk. "You know what this represents?"
"Bravery. Grief. Lives cut short. Wives widowed. Children orphaned."
She snorted. "No...it represents a feast! Think of all the blood. I took my time leaving Europe. With so much death, no one noticed a few more bodies."
Bile rose in Garreth's throat. "All you see in humans is prey?"
"Of course. That's all they are to us; that's all they can ever be."
"Not to me! I've never drunk a drop of their blood!"
"You drink only animal blood?" She came back to stand on the far side of the car, staring mockingly across it at him. "That's bad nutrition." She ticked her tongue. "If you're injured, it affects your recuperative powers."
He carefully focused beyond, not meeting her eyes. "I refuse to prey on people!"
"How righteous!" Her lip curled. "I notice you have no scruples, however, about cozying up to my mother to get to me."
That stung. Heat crawled up his neck and face.
"My mother!" Her voice flattened to a hiss. "It almost makes me sorry I didn't break your neck in that alley."
"Why didn't you?"
"You bit me."
He blinked. She sounded as though that explained everything. Then he remembered his thoughts while reading Dracula, noting the difference between Dracula and Miss Lucy and how Dracula gave Mina his blood in return, but not Miss Lucy. "You mean receiving vampire blood does make a different kind of vampire than someone who's just bitten?"
She applauded. "Very good. You've got a functional brain after all."
"Why does it matter?"
"My research leads me to conclude it involves a virus."
He remembered the medical books on her shelves. "There's a vampire virus? Like rabies."
She rolled her eyes. "Not like rabies. Yes it's carried in the blood and saliva and passed on through a bite. That's the only similarity. Ours is a retrovirus. A healthy immune system destroys the amount of virus in a single bite, but if some survives, because of repeated bites or a weak immune system, it invades the cells and waits until the immune system collapses due to extreme weakness or death." Lane's eyes gleamed as she warmed to her subject. "Then the virus activates...takes command of the host and modifies it to serve the virus's needs, which of course are those of all life forms: survival and reproduction. Mere reanimation appears to need very little virus, because biting a subject long enough to drain him provides enough for that. When a subject receives a massive infusion of virus, though, higher brain functions are restored. Creating the likes of you and me.
"That's the mystery I've yet to solve...why we're created. All the virus needs for reproduction is zombies. We're actually counter-productive because we tend not to reproduce. I've been thinking that originally the virus intended us to be caretakers, looking after the zombies and --- "
"Blood provides the massive infusion." The one pertinent fact in her lecture.
She frowned. "You have no intellectual curiosity about your origin? Fine. Because you bit me, I knew you would rise again fully functional...and I decided to see what would come of that."
He gave her a sardonic smile. "Now you know; what's coming of it is your arrest for murder."
Lane sighed. "I've told you, you can't arrest me. There's no way to force me back to San Francisco and no jail that can confine me. Accept it."
"No!" There had to be a solution, a way to make her answer for Adair and Mossman's deaths.
She sighed again. "All right. Suppose you do manage to arrest, try, and imprison me. Having accomplished the purpose for which you've insinuated yourself into Baumen and my mother's life, what are your future plans?"
"I have none. I don't expect to be around. There'll be no reason for it."
She eyed him thoughtfully. "You mean you plan to destroy yourself?"
If it did not occur naturally. "My life is already destroyed. I detest what you've made me. Once I've seen you face judgement I want out of this existence."
Lane's breath wrapped white around her and melted away into the mist. "Do you? When there's such a wide and wondrous world out there? A world I'm betting you've never seen." Her voice turned musical, floating across to him along with the light spicy-musky scent of her perfume. "You lived in a seaport, but did you ever think of boarding one of the ships docking there and sailing away on her? Wouldn't you like to see wonders like the Himalayas above Kathmandu or climb to the temples of Tibet? Or walk the Great Wall of China and explore the ancient ruins of Karnak and Zimbabwe? Poling through the Okavanga Delta in Africa at flood time there is such richness of life that it makes your throat ache, and there's nothing more awesome than the migrations in the Serengeti, when the plains stretch like a sea of grass and herds of wildebeest and zebra stretch as far as the eye can see. Even the Sahara has raw, stunning beauty...dunes, rock outcroppings, wildlife where you'd think none could exist. In the heat waves you can almost see the cities of ancient civilizations that existed before the sand buried them."
In movement almost too fast to follow, she came over the car and down beside him, voice dropping to a whisper. "There's a city in northern China with a winter festival every year that fills the city with ice sculpture, not snowmen but pure, clear ice chiseled into a wonderland of heroes and mythical animals and castles, and ice arbors with ice benches to sit on. Vienna, Rome, and Copenhagen aren't like they were before the war, but they're still beautiful, and Beijing, Mecca, and Sri Lanka. You shouldn't miss Venice, where all greatest glass craftsmen work. There's so much out there a human life span isn't enough to explore it all...but ours is."
The vision dazzled Garreth...places that had always been just names, that he never dreamed of visiting. He and Marti talked about a trip to Hawaii, but listening to Lane made him realize how foreshortened his horizons were. To see all those places...to have time enough for it ---
Reality cut the thought short. "One problem. Travel takes money, which I don't have."
"I do, blood of my blood," Lane crooned in his ear.
He felt as if someone jabbed him with an electric prod. It jumped him sideways away from her. "Is that what you expected by letting me live...a companion? There is no way in hell that is ever going to happen!"
"What a pity." She smiled at him. "Or maybe not. You want two things, you say: justice and death. I can give you one...you dumb mick!" Fast as a striking snake, she grabbed the front of his jacket and drove her knee into his crotch with a force that lifted him off his feet, then hurled him to the ground to lie curled in blinding agony. "I'd kill you right now except people have seen me with you and I won't shame my mother. But you'll have that death you want before the night is out." She ripped his radio off his belt and strode away, calling back from the mist, "Consider yourself a walking dead man."
Duel
1
Garreth struggled to stand, to pursue Lane, but could not even make it to his knees, only continue to huddle gasping and cursing...at himself as well as her. Dumb mick, all right. Damn right the maiden was powerful. When the hell was he going to get that through his thick skull. He had been kneed in the nuts before, but never with vampire power behind the knee. After this, he reflected, the pain of passing through a door qualified as no more than discomfort.
What felt like hours later he managed to drag himself up the car door and climb in. To sit huddled over the steering wheel. Despite how he hurt, he needed to concentrate on his next move. The lady of ice and steel was out there planning how to kill him. Possessing his radio enabled her to track him and pick where to attack. Being aware of that, however, he knew when to watch for her. The radio might even prove an advantage, luring her to him. By which time he hoped he had a way to deal with her.
Belatedly he became aware of his car radio...Doris calling his number. From the anxiety in her voice, she had been doing so repeatedly. "Seven, respond!"
He thumbed the mike button and tried to make his voice normal. "Seven Baumen." Not succeeding. He sounded more in Maggie's vocal range.
Doris shot back, "Seven, do you need assistance?"
Duncan radioed, "What's your twenty?"
"The cemetery. I'm 10-4." That came out better. "I lost my radio and just returned to the car after failing to find it. Do you have something for me?"
"Come pick up a radio first."
Since Doris saw how he limped up the hall to the radio rack, he gave her a quick lie. "I was in foot pursuit of a skeleton and Grim Reaper and tripped and landed astraddle one of those narrow old tombstones. I'll be fine. What's the call?"
Duncan had taken the one originally intended for him, but now they had a mother anxious because her fourteen-year-old daughter, who was supposed to be home from a Halloween party at ten, was now almost an hour late.
On the way there, Garreth swung by his place for a quick drink of blood. By the time he reached the call address --- a block and a half from the high school, he noted --- he walked normally.
"I may know where your daughter is."
They drove to the gym with the mother shaking her head. "You think Cici crashed the wedding reception? I've brought her up with better manners than that." But when they stepped inside, she said, "Oh."
"Do you see your daughter?"
She pointed at a Wonder Woman and mini-skirted witch dancing to "Witchy Woman." "That's her and her girlfriend Tanya."
Garreth made his way onto the dance floor and tapped Cici's shoulder. "It's midnight for you, Cinderella, and probably you, too, Tanya." He pointed at Cici's mother by the door.
The two girls exchanged looks of utter disgust and humiliation but left with Cici's mother. Though to Garreth's amusement, Mom seemed reluctant to go.
Before leaving himself, he had the French maid from the buffet table cut a slice of cake for Doris that gave her a whole section of castle wall with a window. Turning toward the door with it tucked in a small box the French maid produced from under the table, he met Anna's daughter Dorothy.
"You should have come in when you brought Mada back," she said. "You missed her singing."
Lane came back here instead of lurking out in town tracking him by radio?
"I never realized how good she is. She sang that song that ends with: 'These precious days I spend with you.' Jason and Julie and almost every other couple were hugging and kissing, tears in their eyes. Then she brought the house down with that song Peggy Lee sings, 'Fever.'"
After hearing her sing in San Francisco, then almost snare him into her Grand Tour, Garreth believed it. "Maybe she'll sing again. Where is she now?"
Dorothy glanced around. "Around somewhere. After singing she started going from table to table visiting. I've never seen her so...friendly."
A strategy to establish her presence here, he bet. While the reception remained in full swing, and it looked a long way from winding down --- even the glimpses he had of Anna and Mary Catherine across the dance floor caught no evidence of them folding soon --- everyone would assume Lane was somewhere in the room. But if he planted a suggestion for the crowd to call her for another song, could she appear?
"Baumen Seven."
So much for trying that.
Doris wanted him to check out a possible prowler at Hammond's.
On the way he dropped off her cake, but only nodded acknowledgment of her beaming delight as he thought ahead to the greenhouses. Yes, all that glass made a tempting target for vandals tonight. It also made an excellent site for Lane to ambush him.
Nerves strung tight, he worked his way around the buildings and through the bushes behind them, with his radio turned down to a whisper, peering into the mist for any movement. Listening hard for breathing, footsteps, for a whisper of branches moving unnaturally. Sniffing the air for Lane's perfume. He saw no indication of either Lane or prowlers; smelled nothing suspicious; heard only Doris sending Duncan to a Country Club Drive address for reported vandalism. Then as he neared the front of the greenhouses again, he heard shrieks and a roar of exhaust pipes up 282. Scott and company still out and about.
Back in the car and able to relax, he radioed, "No contact."
"Now you have a 10-47 in Golden's parking lot entrance."
Collisions could be expected tonight if people did not drive carefully. At least this one reportedly involved only property damage, no injuries. It was probably too much to expect the accident to involve Scott and his Trans Am.
At the Golden Bowling Alley, Garreth found not only no Trans Am but no accident at all...and no sign of vehicles that could have been involved in one. His nerves snapped taut again. The drivers might have left after examining examined their vehicles and deciding the damage was not worth involving the police...or wanted to avoid being brethalized. Or maybe Lane made the call to lure him here...even though he saw no way for her to ambush him. The mist did not reduce visibility enough to keep him from seeing her sneaking or charging toward him.
Still, climbing out the car to examine the ground at the parking lot entrance for skid marks or broken glass, he watched for her. On the car radio, Duncan reported no vandalism at the Country Club Drive address.
A crank call...or one intending to isolate him by sending his backup to the other end of town? If so, Lane made no use of the opportunity. Nothing came out of the mist at him but a Toyota Corolla leaving the parking lot.
Again he reported no contact.
While he parked under a light with the car doors locked and wrote up preliminary reports on Hammond's and here, he listened to Doris send Duncan to the high school.
Ten minutes later Duncan came on the radio laughing. "Be on the lookout for a Friday the 13th Jason costume, stolen off the person of the wearer outside the high school gym. Victim is unable to describe his assailant because he is unable to remember the assault, just waking up in the catering truck in his skivvies."
Garreth's pulse jumped. Lane's work! With the reception for an alibi and a disguise to hide her identity, she was free to stalk him. "Did the victim have a real machete with his costume?"
"Negative," Duncan answered.
At least she could not attack him with that. He ought meet with Duncan --- avoiding radio traffic Lane would hear --- and warn him to approach anyone in a Jason costume with extreme caution, that the individual behind the hockey mask was many times more dangerous than the Jason Voorhees character.
Only, would Duncan believe that? Not likely. So he was probably safer thinking they had a mere prankster. Then if he encountered her, she might just incapacitate him...not kill him as she surely would if he pulled a weapon and acted macho.
"Baumen Seven. Possible 10-96 at the sale barn."
Another prowler. Maybe for real this time. Maybe Lane.
With every nerve buzzing, he pulled out of the bowling alley lot and up 282 onto River Road...leaving his headlights off, turning his radio down almost to inaudibility. Building up enough speed to just coast into the big parking lot between the sale barn and the rodeo arena to the south, then wince at the crunch of his tires on gravel. To avoid the lighted front of the building, he parked along its side, then turned off the dome light and pulled his ignition key to prevent an interior light or key-in-ignition warning as he opened the door.
Once out of the car, he stood motionless, peering into the mist, listening, sniffing. Nothing moved in the visible area. He heard nothing...smelled nothing but the scent of old manure in the stock pens, and...aerosol paint.
Could he have a merely human prowler, here to tag the sale barn walls?
Garreth cautiously worked his way around the building, circling well out of the light pools in front. Though if Lane were here she saw him anyway. His skin crawled at his visibility while vaulting the six-foot fences. Better risk that, however, than the greater vulnerability while sliding between the pipe rails and possibly hanging up his gear belt. But nothing came at him. Nothing moved but him. He found no paint on the building or fences, and even the paint odor disappeared.
Until he came around the last rear corner and approached his car. Then he smelled it again. Where did it come from?
A slow turn, sniffing to locate the source, came to a sharp halt facing the car. His nerves cranked tighter. The tires on this passenger side had been slashed. Someone was here. Probably watching him. Lane...had to be, for him to detect no one.
Garreth eased he gun out, shielding the action with his body, and holding the gun down along his leg, resumed walking toward the car. The question was how effective it was against Lane. Could a wound incapacitate her long enough to effect a capture?
But the idea of using a firearm brought an icy chill as he thought of the shotgun in the car. Legend said destroying a vampire's nervous system killed him...so blowing off his head with a shotgun would certainly accomplish that. What if Lane broke into the car for the weapon while he was on the other side of the building.
To his relief, on reaching the car he saw it still in its overhead rack.
Then a stir of air brought an stronger scent of paint. From a definite direction this time...south. He peered across the parking lot into the mist and saw movement by the rodeo arena. Followed a second later by a flat thrum and hiss.
Garreth reacted with all his cop's training and instincts...leaping for cover around the front of the car. Before he reached it, pain exploded in his right shoulder. Force like a powerful punch shoved him backward even as momentum carried him behind the car. The gun slipped from numb fingers as he fell heavily, bringing even more intense pain that radiated all the way through him, setting his testicles throbbing again and tearing a scream from him. Grabbing his shoulder, he discovered why. To his shock, an arrow protruded from his jacket. The feathered end must have hit the car bumper as he fell, wrenching the shaft sideways in the wound.
An arrow. A narrow wooden stake. Fear flooded him.
Pressing against the sale barn wall, he jerked the arrow out, clamping his jaw to keep from screaming again as the shaft grated under his collar bone. The arrow came free in a spurt of blood...and more fear. No metal tipped it. Instead, the shaft had been sharpened to a point. No doubt now that Lane was his assailant. He remembered those blue ribbons in Anna's album that Lane won for archery.
He pressed the jacket against his shoulder, using the thick pile lining to soak up the blood, then picked up the gun again with his left hand...glad his father taught him to shoot with either hand. Gritting his teeth against pain, he pulled his feet under him and crouched listening.
Gravel shifted almost inaudibly...the sound coming toward him, angling to his right.
He peered around that side of the car. Yes, there she was, a shadow emerging from the mist. He had a clear shot, but shooting left-handed meant losing his cover...either by standing or stepping from behind the car. He had to shoot fast, then.
He jumped sideways, crouched, hoping she would not expect that, and took aim.
"Stop!" Lane called. "Don't move."
To Garreth's horror, his finger froze on the trigger. Like being at Wink's back door all over again, without the fire.
Her voice lowered to a whisper. "Put down the gun, lover."
The words dragged at him like daylight. Grimly, he fought them, fought to pulled the trigger. He had a perfect shot. Shoot! Shoot! But his body refused to obey. With all his will trying to fire, his hand slowly opened and dropped the gun.
"You're weak. You hurt, poor baby." The shadow came closer. "You just want to curl up and wait for the pain to go away."
No! He had refused to give up in that alley and damn if he would do so here!
Jason Voorhees appeared out of the mist in heavy boots, dungarees, and a ragged barn coat...carrying a bow with another arrow nocked, the bowstring half drawn. Now Garreth understood the paint smell. Between the gym and here, Lane had stopped to increase her invisibility by spraying the white hockey mask black.
Could two play the power game? Panting in pain, he stared hard at her. "You don't want to shoot me." He stayed crouched, presenting as small a target as possible, protecting his chest. The body armor stopped bullets but not thin, penetrating weapons like arrows. He poured his will at her. "Put...down...the bow. Lay...it...down."
She continued drawing back the bowstring. "You don't have the experience to use that against me. Now, sit up," she crooned. "Give me a good target so it'll be over quick."
No. No! his mind screamed...while his body slowly, inexorably straightened.
She smiled. "That's a good boy."
Desperately he fought to look away, fought to focus on his pain, to become angry, but nothing worked.
She held him, pinned him with her eyes like a butterfly specimen.
Off behind her exhaust pipes roared, accompanied by haunted house shrieks. Scott Dreiling's Trans Am tore into sale barn grounds from River Road.
Lane glanced around.
Free! Garreth snatched up the gun and rolled sideways. From flat on his back he fired at her chest.
Her jerk told him the shot found its mark...yet she immediately steadied again, as if nothing happened.
He had no time to wonder how that could be. The pipes roared louder and gravel spat at them as the Trans Am shot past. In the middle of the parking lot it swung into donuts. On the third one it braked.
Scott shouted out his window, "What's this! Officer Mikey lying down on the job! I'll have to report you. And you've got four flat tires. So now...catch me if you can."
The passenger, whose voice he recognized as Scott's buddy Kenny Leeds, shouted, "D-man, he looks hurt! Shouldn't we --- "
The roar of the Trans Am's motor drowned the rest as it gunned back out the way it came.
With Scott gone, Garreth saw Lane had, too. No, a shadow hovered near the stock pens by the tracks. Lane called, "You need a head shot to stop me with lead, lover. Come and try again."
Then she crossed the tracks and disappeared west. Into Pioneer Park? Another good place to ambush him.
He awkwardly holstered the gun, then fingered his radio. He ought to call in. Attacking him provided a legitimate reason for a full manhunt, and for treating her as armed and dangerous. But it put every officer involved at risk. They would never believe how dangerous she was, or that no bullet short of one in her brain could stop her. The very thought sent him back to Wink O'Hare's apartment watching Harry bleed. He refused to let that happen again. Injured or not, he had to deal with her by himself.
Besides, despite what Lane claimed, vampire healing should kick in soon to stop the pain and bleeding, right? Very soon, he hoped, starting after her. Every step jolted his shoulder and brought a new wave of pain. He forced himself to keep moving.
Garreth tried putting himself in Lane's place, to guess her next place to ambush him. Did the bow have the range to shoot him from the bandstand?
Not the bandstand. Footsteps sounded on his left...moving away. He saw her leap the wall bordering the park's south edge. Fuzzy light from a streetlight showed her heading down Landon.
She did not intend to ambush him here? Where, then? She must have some plan, but what? Maybe just to keep him following until he collapsed. The way he felt --- light-headed, nauseated, shaky as he crawled over the wall after her --- that would not be much longer. If he gave up. Not an option. He had to catch her.
"Baumen Seven."
Garreth groaned. Not now, Doris, please; not now. Tell her he was busy? He tried his voice first, and decided that croak was worse than not answering.
Doris called him again, then after a pause: "Baumen Five. 10-19 ASAP!"
Garreth used speculation to distract himself from his pain. She urgently wanted Duncan at the station. Because he failed to answer? If that, why the request to come to the station rather than sending Duncan to Garreth's last reported location?
Those questions sustained him to Walnut. Ahead, a streetlight at the Pine intersection shone bright enough in the mist to show Lane there and turning left. He forced himself into a jog. He must not lose her.
Down at Oak, a patrol car raced across the intersection toward Kansas, light bar flashing. Duncan heading out in a hurry...and turning north up Kansas, from the sound of his engine.
He reached Pine to find Lane had disappeared. Had she gone to Kansas? No, he saw nothing of her when he reached there. As much of the street as he could see was deserted...except for the expected vehicles in front of the Brown Bottle and VFW hall. Maybe Lane had taken to an alley. A hand on the wall of the Pioneer Grill helped steady him jogging back to the alley behind it.
The radio spat, "Five to Seven!" Duncan.
If he answered, Duncan would want to know his location.
He saw nothing up the alley, but turning to check the alley across the street...yes! Something moved in the mist beyond the post office. Hunching low, he dodged across the street.
"Seven, respond!"
After flattening against the post office wall, he peered around the corner into the alley. The shape seemed to be hesitating between the post office and Wiesner's Flowers. Waiting for him to appear...backlit by the Pine streetlights?
"Five, what's the situation?" Doris asked.
"The car's where the Leeds kid said. Tires flat. No Seven."
So Scott, or at least his buddy, did report what they saw?
The pitch of Duncan's voice climbed. "There's an arrow with blood on it...and bloody hand prints on the car."
Garreth slid around the corner into the alley, hugging the building and searching for something to use as a shield. If only trash downtown went into metal cans with lids like those of homeowners, instead of into dumpsters.
"Seven! Respond!" Doris barked. "What's your status!"
With every area agency hearing this, answering could bring not just Duncan but deputies and who knew else.
"Seven, what's your twenty!"
A new voice came on...deep, rasping. "He's in the alley between Pine and Oak." Lane, disguising her voice. Had to be. But what the hell was she up to?
"Identify yourself," Doris came back
"I am become Death, destroyer of worlds. Your world at least, Inspector," Lane called in her normal voice, off the radio, and moved away at an easy jog.
A jog! A pace that let him keep up. She had to be leading him into a trap. Trying to think where and what kind, he followed...keeping close to the post office wall, then staggering hunched past the post office loading dock and employee parking lot into cover of the florist's dumpster.
Automatically he also noted the roar of pipes coming south on Kansas...passing...slowing for the turn onto 282. Accompanied by another vehicle that sounded like a truck. Idiots, racing tonight just because the street had no traffic!
Not that he was any smarter, he reflected as he edged around the dumpster...following a stone cold killer into an unknown trap with no effective weapon.
A car engine roared behind him and headlights lit him up...swinging as the vehicle fishtailed into the alley. A glance backward caught a flashing light bar. Duncan...who must have floored it all the way down from the Kansas entrance of the sale barn lot.
The patrol car braked just short of hitting Garreth and Duncan jumped out. "Mikaelian, what the hell --- "
Garreth waved him back. "Stop! Get back in the car!"
Duncan ran into the headlight beams. "Jesus, man! You're covered in blood and --- "
Garreth backed away. "Damn it...get the fuck out of here!"
"I am become Death!" Lane rasped from down the alley. A bowstring thrummed.
Duncan went down, screaming, an arrow through his thigh.
Reflex drove Garreth toward Duncan, pulling off his tie to use as a tourniquet. Only crossing the beam of one headlight did he realize he was making himself a target. Though the distance between him and Duncan had to mean Duncan was the intentional target. Still, he killed the headlight above Duncan by smashing it with his elbow before dropping to his knees beside Duncan.
Whether or not that reduced their visibility, Lane did not shoot again. She just called back in the rasping voice, "See if you can sniff me out. The end is nigh."
Duncan jerked the tie away from Garreth. "Leave me!" he gasped. "Get that son of a bitch!"
For several seconds Garreth wondered if he could stand again, his legs felt so weak. But the thought of Lane escaping forced him onto his feet and after her.
Behind him and on the radio, Duncan shouted, "Officer down," and the location.
Crossing Oak into the next alley the meaning of Lane's words struck Garreth...explaining the game she had been playing and why she shot Duncan. She mean to kill him at the sale barn, but thanks to Scott's interruption, she changed plans to look for another victim to witness the fact that a psycho was shooting police officers in Baumen. Which signaled the game was over. Her next shot would be for the kill.
Only where did she lie in wait for him? Not behind a corner of the Lutheran and Methodist churches on the back side of the block, but maybe she planned to jump out at him from the rear door of Toews Hardware or Hartzfeldt Liquor? Yes, opening those doors would set off alarms, but who was there to respond? Or she might fire down on him from a roof.
He flattened against the wall of the hardware store where he was behind the door if it opened and looked up to check the roof line. The certainty was that she had a plan. He needed one, too. He needed a plan and he needed a weapon other than his gun --- shaky as he felt, he could never make that head shot --- and he needed them fast, before anyone else became involved and endangered. Radio traffic had Duncan reporting a wounded Mikaelian and Doris reassuring Duncan Fire Rescue was on its way. Garreth heard the siren coming up Oak. A deputy radioed he was close to the north and on his way in, too.
Staring across the alley at the churches, one possibility for a weapon occurred to Garreth. But he needed to make Lane follow him for a change...and manage to stay ahead of her. So where was she?
She said, sniff her out. He stepped away from the wall and followed the faint but still detectable odor of paint. Past the hardware store, past the liquor store...to the Driscoll Theater's fire exit. She had gone in there...through a closed door. He would have to pass through, too.
Garreth gritted his teeth.
Wrench!
The pain of passage turned to a screaming anguish in his shoulder that burned through his chest and down his arm. He stumbled through the vestibule between the exit and curtained archway into the theater proper and dropped to hands and knees, half from pain, half to use the seats for cover until he could move more steadily. Reaching his weapon meant passing through two more doors. Could he manage that?
Come on, man! Don't be a wimp!
Gritting his teeth, he pulled his feet under him and braced to run up the near aisle through the William Tell Sitting Duck Shooting Gallery. The creaks and moans of the old building hid any footsteps or breathing, but...she waited somewhere in the twilight of his night sight with a final arrow ready for him.
A bowstring thrummed. Above him. Balcony!
Garreth dived up the aisle. The arrow sliced into the carpeting behind him.
"That's the trouble with a bow, Lane," he called. "There's no silencer on it. Catch me if you can."
He ran for the lobby and the front door, heart thundering in terror. He wore a target on his back and Lane had all the advantages: a weapon, expertise with it, and no injuries.
Wrench!
He lurched forward across the sidewalk, fighting a scream, fighting to stay on his feet. Don't fall, damn you; don't fall or you're dead!
He staggered across the tracks onto the far side of the street.
The bowstring sang its deadly song behind him. Fire burned across his right ribs.
Garreth stumbled. He struggled half a dozen steps on feet and his uninjured hand but managed to avoid a complete fall, then he was up again, moving as fast as he could. Only to slip twice more on the increasingly slick street, once scraping his palms as he came skidding down on them and a knee. Nerves sent muscles over his ribs and in his shoulder into spasm. He gasped in anguish...kept moving, not daring to slow down, not daring to look back.
Castle Drugs loomed before him. He hit the door --- wrench --- and landed heavily on the floor inside. His head spun and he felt sweat running down his face. On elbows and knees, to avoid leaving any bloody hand prints, he crawled to the counters along the left wall and down behind them to the display case where he saw Rosie Wiest working two weeks ago.
Inside the display case sat a heavenly host of ceramic angels and cherubs and a row of boxes holding rosaries.
Garreth pushed a handle on the sliding door behind the case using his knuckles to avoid leaving fingerprints. Unlocked. He slid the glass open and pulled out a box. Though Lane must be seconds behind him, he moved other boxes to hide the gap before crawling around the end of the display case into the nearest aisle. Giving thanks the shelves still ran parallel to the front of the store and provided the intruder concealment he warned Mrs. Wiest about. Listening for any sound up front, he removed the rosary from its box and hid the box behind bottles of mouthwash on the bottom shelf, then he pushed to his feet and opened his jacket to examine the wound in his side. The pointed end of the arrow protruded from his shirt, having passed though his body armor, but despite the pain and warmth of blood spreading down his size, did not feel stuck in him. Maybe just caught his skin?
Footsteps whispered up front.
Garreth's heart lurched. He peered around the shelf. Lane stood just inside the front door, an arrow ready in her bow, her head tilted, listening. Garreth forced himself to breathe slowly and softly.
"Hello, Inspector," Lane said. "I smell you. I smell your fear. Are you badly hurt? I warned you how a diet of animal blood affects your recuperative powers."
He needed to get close to her...behind her. Come to me, blood mother. He groaned softly.
Lane's head turned, hunting the source of the sound. "Come out, come...out."
He yelled at himself in his head to drown her voice. Don't listen, don't listen. Make her listen. He whimpered.
Lane moved forward, almost soundlessly now...past the checkout counter...past the photo counter. "Stop...hiding."
He groaned.
She passed the batteries to the rosary display case.
Breathing as little as possible, ears straining for sounds of Lane's approach, he waited. Steps whispered closer.
Garreth grabbed a dental floss package and tossed it over the shelves into the next aisle. It clattered on the floor.
He heard her spin...step into the aisle.
Gathering all his will, Garreth made himself move...leaping around the end of the shelves. With his arm and ribs screaming with agony at lifting his arm, he tossed the loop of beads over her head and mask and jerked it snug.
Lane reached for her neck, snarling, dropping the bow and arrow she had ready for him. Then her hand touched the crucifix in the middle of the rosary. She shrieked...the high, tearing sound of someone in mortal agony. Garreth needed all his will to keep the rosary tight.
"Garreth, let loose!" Lane cried. "I can't stand the pain!" She clawed at his hands. "I'll do whatever you want...anything...just take this thing off me. Please. Please!" She began sobbing.
Dizziness swept through him. His knees trembled, making him fight to stay on his feet. Was this capture too late? Had he become too weakened to hold on to her?
He thought of Duncan shot down, of Mossman and Adair's drained bodies...of Harry bleeding almost to death on Wink O'Hare's floor. Of his own shattered life. The maiden is powerful. Grimly, he held the rosary tight.
"We're going to walk out of here and back to my place." He hoped.
"Yes. Yes! Whatever you want, if you'll just take this thing off! Inspector, it's burning me! It's a thousand times worse than the barrier around dwellings. Help me. Take it off! Garreth, please!" Lane screamed.
Wrench!
Only his grip on the rosary kept him on his feet...and kept him standing while he kicked in the drug store's door to fake a breakin and explain the presence of a bow and arrow on the floor. The street spun around him. He shivered with cold, a sensation he noted in dismay. Could he hang on long enough to reach his place?
Lane started screaming. "Help! Someone help me!"
Garreth jerked the rosary. "Shut up!"
She subsided into raspy gasps. Her hatred beat at him. He angled for Maple Street. Whoever had gone to Duncan's aid would initially concentrate activity at the north end of the block near Oak. If he forced Lane past the south end, then stuck to alleys and back yards, they should reach his place without being seen.
And then what?
He saw only one answer. But the deaths had to look like an accident, and it had to destroy their bodies. A fiery crash of the ZX should do. It would solve everything. Lane would be punished and he pay for her blood with his. He could stop fighting blood hunger; Grandma Doyle would be relieved; Brian could be adopted in clear conscience.
They crossed the tracks. Lane reached for his hands, but each time her nails touched his skin, Garreth jerked the rosary and she subsided with a gasp of anguish. He gritted his teeth, fighting dizziness and weakness...fighting to keep his hold on her and his balance on the slick paving.
Up Kansas, motors roared. Garreth looked around to see Scott's Trans Am gunning out of the mist, just in front of a pickup jacked high on its axles. He sucked in a breath of relief. He did not have to take her all the way home.
Before he could debate the rightness of the action, or change his mind, he caught Lane's chin with his good hand. A quick jerk snapped her head around backward on her neck with a crack like a gunshot. Too fast for her to know what happened, he hoped. Then he shoved his hands under her arms and leaped directly in the path of the Trans Am.
It had no chance to stop. Scott tried. Brakes screamed...but his tires found no traction on the paving and the Trans Am spun end for end. Garreth kept moving, pushing himself and the slack Lane between vehicle and a solid old light pole in front of the theater...until hurtling metal wrapped itself sideways around the pole, Lane, and Garreth. The pickup piled into the Trans Am, further crushing them and the car against the pole.
Wrench.
Garreth found himself rolling on the sidewalk, shoulder and side burning with pain, arrow now driven out through the front of his jacket.
"No!" he howled. He was not supposed to pass through the pole! He was supposed to die in the crash and burn with Lane.
Then he realized there was no fire, only the smell of spilling gas.
Lurching to his feet, Garreth scrambled for the driver's door. The crash had jammed it. He smashed the window with his radio and pulled out the dazed boy. "Run!" he yelled at the pickup's driver. "It's going to blow!"
Dropping the radio, he searched Scott's pockets. Good. There were the cigarettes and lighter Garreth expected to find. Flicking the lighter, he tossed it under the Trans Am and hauled Scott backward.
Flame engulfed the car and quickly spread to the pickup and the light pole.
Violet ran out of the hotel with a fire extinguisher.
Garreth reached for it. "I'll do this. You take the boys in the hotel and call the fire department."
He contrived to fall, with the extinguisher "coming apart" in his hands, spewing foam on the sidewalk instead of the flames. After that, he and the people who materialized out of the hotel could only stand and watch the car, and Lane's body, burn.
An unexpected sense of desolation swept him. In spite of his outrage at her crimes, in spite of burning hatred for what she had done to Harry and him, her death hurt. Pain closed his throat...grief for the child whose torment had driven her to seek the power of the vampire life and use it to vent her hatred on humanity, for the waste of an intellect curious and clever enough to theorize what made vampires, for the voice that would never sing enchantment again.
The fire department arrived in time to save the light pole and keep Lane from burning to the bone, but what Garreth saw amid the metal wrapped around her, told him her hands had charred beyond recovery of fingerprints and the hockey mask looked melted onto her face. An autopsy, if they bothered with one, could establish her as female but forty-eight years too young to be Mada Bieber.
Reassured Lane could not be identified, Garreth felt as if his bones melted. He faded back against the theater ticket booth and slid down to sit on the sidewalk.
In moments feet gathered around him. Voices began exclaiming about his bloody jacket and the arrow protruding from it, began asking questions.
He ignored them. God he was tired...too tired to answer, too tired to feel suicidal any longer, too tired even to feel pain. He closed his eyes and shut out the world.
2
To Garreth, it indicated his state of debilitation that he never resisted being admitted to the hospital, refused to think about daylight turning the bed into misery, could not bother to worry about the results of his bloodwork, and did not even mind that they put him in a room with Duncan. Once Dr. Staab in the ER mentioned giving him blood, nothing else mattered. For all her deception, he knew Lane had not lied about recuperation and human blood. Blood revived him in San Francisco; he wanted it now, whatever it took to get it. He lay watching the blood bag slowly empty, feeling pain and weakness ease a little more with every drop, and fought an urge to just unplug the tube from the catheter in his arm and suck the bag dry. Fighting less because Duncan might see than the fear drinking human blood would give him a hunger impossible to satisfy with cattle blood and turn him into Lane, preying on people.
Duncan, of course, wanted all the details about what happened after Garreth left him in the alley.
Garreth sighed and said, "It's a blur. I think I was running on pure reflex and adrenaline."
He had a more complete story for Danzig in the ER, of course...that in pursuit of the assailant, whom he spotted smashing Castle's front door --- probably planning to steal drugs --- he entered the drug store, where the assailant managed to get behind him and take another shot. But instead of going down, Garreth turned and grabbed the bow. At which point the assailant fled. Garreth again pursued him...caught up as they crossed the tracks and entered the southbound lanes of Kansas...and managed to grab the back of the assailant's jacket. He did not see or hear the Trans Am until it was on top of them. He had not drawn his gun after firing once at the sale barn because pursuing his assailant took all his strength.
Danzig listened in silence to the end, then said, "What I don't understand is why you didn't call for backup after you were attacked at the sale barn, or respond to Doris and Duncan when they called you."
Garreth shook his head in pretended frustration. "I kept trying. I heard them but they obviously didn't hear me. I fell on the radio when the arrow hit me. Maybe that damaged the mike."
Fortunately the radio was also a casualty of the fire.
Danzig appeared to accept that. The worst moment had come next, when Danzig said, "Tell me what you know about Mada Bieber."
Garreth froze. "What does she have to do with this?"
"Nothing as far as I know, but Anna Bieber has been calling the station. She hasn't seen her daughter since the wedding reception but said Mada took a ride with you earlier and wondered if she said anything to you that might explain her disappearance."
A loose end that needed tying up...in a way that never connected it to their John Doe assailant. He frowned as though thinking back. "Maybe, though I didn't understand that at the time. She came out of the gym and asked to ride along with me, saying she needed to talk to me. What she wanted to was to tell me she's my grandmother, that she lied to her mother about not being pregnant. She clearly felt extreme guilt about the lie, and about abandoning the baby. She said, 'But I didn't want him to suffer the stigma of being a bastard that I did.'"
Danzig said, "I guess there's a part of your grandmother search I haven't heard."
"A part I didn't know myself until a few weeks ago. Anyway, Mada said she knew Colleen Mikaelian would be a wonderful mother, much better than she could be. 'For years I thought about telling Mama,' she said, 'but I kept thinking how disappointed she'd be with me, and how people would whisper behind her, like mother like daughter and the daughter didn't even have the decency to get married and give the bastard a name. I didn't want to shame her that way.'"
An ah-ha look of understanding came into Danzig's eyes.
"'Now the lie has come to haunt me,' she said. I said, so tell your mother quietly. No one else has to know. She said if she did it would change Anna's attitude toward me and everyone would figure it out. I said so let them. Anna didn't let your birth shame her and she'll ignore any talk about you." When I dropped her back at the high school she said she was going to tell her mother. But maybe she lost her nerve."
"And took off? Without clothes, and without her rental car?"
Oh, god...that needed explanation. But not by him...not tonight. His brain felt like sludge. Maybe just as well. Pat explanations always sounded suspicious to him. He imagined they did to Danzig, too. So Garreth confined himself to a shrug. It hurt like hell. "She's always kept in contact with Anna. Hopefully she'll call or something and explain."
Lying in bed watching the blood bag deflate and tuning out Duncan's rambling speculation on the identity of their psycho, Garreth wondered how to have Mada make contact and establish herself as alive elsewhere, definitely separating her disappearance from John Doe's appearance. When his brain still produced no bright idea, he turned to considering the real irony of the evening. Not long after Garreth arrived in the room, City Councilman Al Dreiling had come up the hall from his son's room, the son Garreth might have killed while destroying Lane, to thank Garreth for saving Scott's life. "I know he's been a pain in the butt for you guys. Maybe this will make him finally listen to me and grow up."
Eventually Duncan shut up. Garreth closed his eyes, savoring the silence and the feel of life dribbling into him.
"Garreth!"
Maggie! His eyes flew open.
She hurtled across the room to his bed and crushed the nearest hand with hers. "What happened? How bad are you hurt? Doris called Helen, thinking you might need some things here in the hospital and she called me, of course. I --- " She broke off to frown across at Duncan, who eyed the two of them with raised brows and the start of a sly smile. "Okay, Ed, say it!"
He blinked. "Say what?"
"Whatever smartass remarks about me or us you're cooking up in your skull." She straightened, hands on hips. "Now's the time. Get it all out. Because if I hear anything from you later, or you start pulling your un-funny practical jokes, I will yank your nuts out through your throat!"
Duncan's jaw dropped, then snapped shut.
"Fine!" Maggie said, and stepped around the bed to jerk the curtain between the two closed. Then she pulled up a chair beside the bed and reached through the bed rail to take Garreth's hand again. "You don't have to tell me anything right now. There's all the time in the world later. Go to sleep. I'll just sit here until they kick me out."
At a guess, looking at her jaw, no one better try. Garreth squeezed her hand back, smiling at her...and discovered he had no regrets about surviving the crash. His life --- unlife --- might be tangled in lies, but Maggie, like Baumen, gave him reasons to continue it, and learn how to enjoy it.
3
Where do they end, the roads that lead a man through hell?
Maybe with the realization that hell is only what people make for themselves, Garreth thought, lying in his own bed four nights later with his arms around Maggie, breathing in the sweet scents of her blood and skin and the musky one of sex.
Maybe it ended with atonement. He needed to make amends for killing Lane and using Scott to destroy her. As much as he disliked the boy, he felt sorry for him at the hearing today, no longer cocky but white-faced at the consequences of his recklessness. In the courtroom, Garreth silently committed himself to making friends with the boy.
He committed himself, too, to giving Anna Bieber friendship and support, to acting as the great-grandson she would soon believe him to be.
Lien gave him an explanation for Mada's disappearance when he called her two days ago and told her everything...almost. Odd how he could confide so much in her...could confess to killing Lane, expecting understanding --- which she gave him --- ask her to abet a cover-up --- which she agreed to --- but still not be able to admit what he had become.
He thought maybe Lien could send a typed note to Anna, purporting to be from Mada, "confessing" to being Garreth's grandmother and apologizing for running off because she felt so ashamed of having lied. Then the next time Lien read of an apartment house fire or other disaster with multiple casualties and some unidentified bodies, Lien would send another letter claiming to be a friend of Mada's, regretting to inform Anna that Mada was believed to be one of the casualties.
"It won't work," Lien said. "If she were alive, even if she confessed by letter, she would resume calling her mother. No, there must be nothing from her until we're ready to have her die. I read about fugue states not long ago. I think she left the gym for a breath of air and met the man in this horror movie costume stealing the bow and arrows --- you did say they found that's where the weapon came from --- and he attacked her. He slammed her head into the wall and that concussion caused her to enter a fugue state in which she thought she was one of her old professional personalities."
"Mala Babra," Garreth said.
"Good. As Mala, she didn't know what she was doing in this strange town when she should be in San Francisco singing so she walked away and along the highway thumbed a ride with a trucker. She made her way back here by stages, stopping here and there to make money singing in bars and such. Once she reached here she began recovering her memory and contacted a friend, me, Lucy Lee. I will call your Anna, give her the story and say I've given Mada a sleeping pill because she was so bewildered, but Mada herself will call in the morning. Only I'll call again to say with great regret that while I was out for the evening, because I'm a singer, too, my apartment house burned and Mada died in it. Or I assume so because she wasn't among the survivors and there are unidentified bodies. I'll even offer to send Mrs. Bieber the newspaper article."
Which he hoped would put Mada to rest far from the John Doe --- fortunately not autopsied --- buried here. Buried but never to be forgotten. He planned to tend the grave as Anna would if she knew, and as a blood debt, a reminder of responsibility and accountability.
Maggie stirred in his arms. "Why don't we move more to my side of the bed. Your side is so lumpy, like you have rocks in the mattress."
"Nothing's wrong with that," he answered, though he shifted her off the pallet. There must be a better way to have his sleeping earth. Maybe take fabric to someone and ask for a custom mattress pad with packets of earth sewn into the quilting, calling it an "holistic" aid to health. Further evidence that Californians were nutty, of course...which he hoped made his differences seem quirky rather than suspicious. "Contact with earth sets up positive resonance in the human body. My veins carry the blood of an ancient lineage who always keep close contact with the earth and barring accident or murder, live very long lives."
She sighed. "You're crazy, Garreth."
"Ah, yes, but it's part o' me charm, Maggie darlin'."
She giggled and snuggled against his bandaged shoulder and side.
He smiled down at her. Maggie was not like Marti but even without being able to bare his soul to her, she filled some of his needs, as he did some of hers. The gulf between him and normal humans might be narrower than Lane thought, and bridgeable with care.
"What did you talk about with your ex-wife today?" Maggie murmured.
"Brian." They agreed Dennis could adopt him, but have Brian hyphenate his last name to remain a Mikaelian, too. That satisfied Garreth's parents, and Garreth, so he could keep track of his descendants. "Go to sleep. I need to run."
"You can't lay off until your shoulder and side finish healing?" She shook her head and pulled the blankets over her head. "I always knew runners have a cog missing."
The bandages were nothing but props now, the wounds under them just angry scars...soon to disappear altogether.
Sliding out of bed, he dressed in a warm-up suit and packed his bottles. The night outside was clear, the stars and sliver of moon bright as crystal in the icy sky. Garreth drew the air deep in his lungs and blew it out in an incandescent cloud of steam. He ran easily, enjoying his strength and endurance and the vision that turned darkness to twilight. Too bad he could not share it with Maggie, but... nothing is perfect and the solitude had its own pleasure.
The frozen ground streamed beneath his feet. When something moved in his peripheral vision, he smiled. Not exactly solitude. Three coyotes had fallen in behind him, tongues lolling in predatory laughter.
"Hi, gang."
He lengthened his stride. Far ahead, a herd of cattle lay dozing. With his shadow escort pacing him, he aimed for them. Nothing is perfect, so this was not bad. It was enough.
Lee Killough has been storytelling since the age of four or five, when she started making up her own bedtime stories, then later, her own episodes of her favorite radio and TV shows. Because she loves both SF and mysteries, her work combines the two genres. Although published as SF, most of her novels are actually mysteries with SF or fantasy elements...with a preference--thanks to a childhood hooked on TV cop shows--for cop protagonists.
Also published by BWLPP
Killer Karma
Aftershock
Wilding Nights
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