Stake

by Kevin J. Anderson

  ‘Thank you!’ She lifted her glass to him in a brief salute and took another gulp of the red wine. ‘You saved my life in more ways than one. In fact, when I finish dinner, I’ll sit out in a lawn chair in the front yard and read a magazine.’

  ‘Sounds like a good plan,’ Carrow said.

  Alexis Tarada was the best option for him to spread the word about Stricklin in a way that Helsing would see it. Even if she wasn’t in direct contact with the man, as she insisted, Carrow hoped he could convince her to post something on her crazytown website. He should also tell her about Zelm’s suggestion that he join her at the gala, which he doubted she would be thrilled about.

  Since Tarada’s house was only fifteen minutes away from Stricklin’s, Carrow decided to pay her a visit before he continued down the list of targets from Helsing’s dossier.

  A handsome man in his early thirties answered the door. He had well-styled hair and his shirt seemed too formal for relaxing around the house. Yellowing bruises around his eyes were poorly covered by make-up. He squinted in the light and stepped farther back inside.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Carrow ran his gaze up and down the man. ‘You must be the housemate.’

  The man seemed cautious and amused. ‘I am indeed a housemate. Are you selling vacuums or cleaning products?’

  ‘Detective Carrow, CSPD. Need to speak with Alexis Tarada.’

  ‘Oh, you’re the detective Lex complains about. Blair September, pleased to meet you.’ He extended his hand, as if they were meeting at a cocktail party.

  Carrow shook it automatically. ‘She complains about me? What do you mean?’

  ‘She says you’re closed minded.’

  ‘Because I don’t believe in little green vampires?’ He frowned, reset. There was no point in arguing with this man. ‘Let me speak to Miss Tarada, please. I have further information on a case.’

  ‘I wish I could help you, but she’s not here.’ Now Blair looked worried instead of aloof. ‘She went to meet somebody yesterday afternoon and stayed out all night.’

  That surprised him. ‘You mean, like a boyfriend?’

  Blair seemed affronted. ‘That’s none of your business, but no, not a boyfriend. And it’s not like her.’ He made no move to let Carrow inside.

  Maybe Tarada was there after all, maybe hiding Helsing somewhere in the house. Was the housemate covering for her? Was he an accessory?

  Blair hesitated, seemed almost ready to blurt out something, and then he changed his mind. ‘Lex knows what she’s doing. She told me not to worry about her, and I’ll respect that. For a little while longer.’

  ‘Have her contact me when she gets in.’ In order to make sure she wouldn’t avoid him, he added, ‘Tell her there’s been another murder.’

  Blair raised his eyebrows again, regained his aloof demeanor. ‘I’m sure that’ll pique her interest.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  When Lexi awoke, she found herself behind the wheel of her Toyota in the forest. The midday sun shone through the trees. The details were so incongruous and confusing that she closed her eyes again, trying to reset reality and wake up from this bizarre hallucination.

  Her head pounded and her throat felt thick. Sinister trees towered around her car on the isolated dirt road, and a chain blocked further access in front of her.

  She gripped the steering wheel and pressed her back against the driver’s seat, taking deep breaths, exhaling slowly. With a sudden, irrational fear of vampires, Bigfoot, werewolves, and any other frightening creature – including crazed human beings – she locked the car doors.

  She tried to focus, tried to remember. Her thoughts were all fuzzy, as if Blair had given her too many basil martinis. But this wasn’t a hangover. She hadn’t had anything to drink … except tea!

  She remembered it all now: Lucius, the camp deep in the forest, the survivalists who feared the end of humanity. Vampires! The story Lucius had told, the other man with the scarred throat. They meant to convince her, wanted her on their side. To join them, or just to understand? Lucius had shown her his ‘evidence’, which turned out to be nothing more than a campfire tale. And then they had drugged her again to bring her back to her car.

  ‘Bastards,’ she muttered under her breath and tried to strangle the steering wheel. ‘That’s not the way to make me sympathetic to your cause!’

  How long had it been? It was early morning when she’d regained full consciousness the first time. She had talked with Lucius for an hour or so before Mama’s special tea rendered her unconscious again.

  She found her gun lying on the passenger seat beside her. They had returned it.

  She needed to get home. Her stomach twisted as she thought of how upset Blair must be by now. She had told him not to worry, but she’d been gone overnight, almost an entire day. Grabbing her cell phone, she saw that she had no signal, no way to call him. Lucius and his people had just left her stranded out here.

  ‘Bastards,’ she repeated. She certainly disliked the Bastion’s methods. Only desperate people would do that – truly frightened people who were afraid for their lives and for humanity. Or crazy people.

  She felt in her pocket and found her car keys, which made her weak with relief. When she inserted the key into the ignition, she discovered that her whole body was trembling. She couldn’t see straight. Lexi wanted to drive out of there, return to civilization, but she could barely keep her head up. With the after-effects of the drugged tea, she didn’t dare drive, especially on these winding dirt roads. Too many sheer drop-offs to deep ravines.

  Her head throbbing, she double-checked that the door locks were set – though surely any ruthless vampire could smash right through the windshield – and slumped back in a confused stupor for half an hour or so, just trying to recover, to get her head straight.

  Finally, when bright early-afternoon sunshine streamed through the trees, she started the car, relieved to hear the engine come to life. Driving with painstaking caution, turning too sharply and then overcorrecting, Lexi crawled along.

  It took her more than two hours to get back home. As soon as she reached the fringes of the city, she called home, talked to a frantic Blair. ‘I’m all right, honest. Shaken, confused. Still processing. I promise I’ll be home in half an hour.’

  When she walked into the house, Blair was on the living-room sofa, obviously waiting for her. He lurched to his feet. ‘You’re safe! I’m glad to see it with my own eyes.’

  ‘I told you not to worry.’ She felt ashamed for what she had done to him, though she’d had no control over what had happened. ‘I’m still alive, and I’ve got a lot to think about.’

  Blair reached her in a few steps, threw his arms around her. ‘You need to tell me everything. Don’t lie to me.’

  ‘Right now I just need to crash and process things. It wasn’t what I expected at all. It wasn’t Simon Helsing, but somebody else who wanted to tell me secrets.’ She just stood holding him for a long moment. All the words had evaporated out of her head, and he didn’t pressure her. She breathed into his shirt. ‘Thanks for being there for me.’

  ‘If I was there, then I wouldn’t need to worry about you.’ He stepped back. ‘And I do expect to hear all about it – when you’re ready. Can I make you a cup of coffee? I bought a French press for special occasions and I’m not afraid to use it.’

  She squeezed him again. ‘Rough night, rough morning, rough afternoon. What I need most is a shower, warm snuggly clothes, and a nap. I need to call in a free pass. No judgment.’

  He repeated her own words to him. ‘You always get a free pass from me. Oh, that detective came by to see you again.’ Blair pursed his lips. ‘Not impressed.’

  She felt a chill. Had he somehow known she was meeting Simon Helsing? ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Something about the case. He said there’s been another murder that you might be interested in.’

  She felt a sinking in her gut. She hadn’t been with Helsing, so maybe he had killed anoth
er person on his list. She groaned.

  ‘You can worry about murders in a little bit.’ Blair turned her around by the shoulders, marched her toward her room. ‘First, you take care of yourself.’

  The shower felt wonderful, as did her clean, warm sweats, but before she could crawl into bed for an afternoon nap, the phone rang – her parents calling for their weekly conversation. Lexi didn’t know if she could face it. She couldn’t even remember what day of the week it was.

  She did her best to sound cheerful, normal. Her father said, ‘We like to check up on you, especially with more murders in the news. Colorado Springs seemed like a nice place when you moved there, but it’s just a dangerous big city after all.’

  Before Lexi could respond, her mother continued, ‘You’d meet a better group of people if you went to church. You haven’t found a place since you moved, and it’s about time.’ Lexi could feel the lecture coming. ‘Colorado Springs has plenty of good churches. Your father looked them up.’ Perry Tarada considered himself quite an expert in ‘the Google’.

  ‘I’m sure there must be nice ones,’ Lexi said. ‘Churches are more common than Starbucks around here, one on every corner.’

  Her parents paused on the phone. ‘What does church have to do with Starbucks?’

  ‘Never mind. I’ll consider it. I’ve still got my Sunday church dresses – I was just looking at them the other day.’ She hoped it would change the subject. ‘I can’t go this Sunday, though, because I’ll be out late the night before. I’ve been invited to a fancy charity gala, very upscale and important.’

  ‘Is it a charity for one of the mission organizations? I’m proud of you.’

  ‘A different sort of charity. A philanthropist. He’s a supporter of my site.’ That turned the conversation around again.

  ‘Be careful if you’re out late. It’s dangerous,’ Perry warned.

  Her mother asked, ‘Are you still wearing the necklace we gave you?’

  She fingered the gold chain and the small cross around her neck. ‘Always, Mom. I promised.’ It was a concession she had made to keep her parents from nagging her.

  ‘We wish you’d come home.’ Her father was getting that tone in his voice again.

  ‘This is my home now. You should come and visit.’ She cringed as she tried to imagine a week with Blair and her parents in the same house, but they would never make the drive.

  ‘Those murders sound horrific. We’ve read all about them.’

  ‘Oh, have you been checking out my website?’ Lexi asked.

  ‘Of course not,’ Sharon said. ‘But we watch the news.’

  ‘The real news,’ her dad assured her, ‘not that fake news stuff.’

  Since Lexi spent her days tracking down false memes and misleading stories, intentional misinformation designed to corrupt gullible people, Lexi had overwhelming evidence to show them about how their favorite news was extraordinarily biased, but she knew they wouldn’t look. ‘Thanks, but right now I want to get some sleep. I had a rough night.’

  ‘It’s almost time to start dinner,’ her mother said.

  ‘What did you do last night?’ her father said.

  ‘I was just working late. Goodbye now. Love you both.’

  When she ended the call, Lexi felt tense in an entirely different way from what she’d felt after her experience with the Bastion. She closed the curtains and crawled into bed, ready for a long, deep nap. As she dropped off, she realized the irony of hiding inside a darkened house and sleeping during the day.

  THIRTY-NINE

  The murder scene at the Rambler Star Motel was a mess. Yellow police tape sectioned off the room, the cement doorstep, and part of the asphalt parking lot. Crime scene techs combed over the site, gathering evidence. Dr Orla Watson looked down at the body with a calculating frown.

  The victim lay sprawled on his chest, head turned sideways, his arms and legs bent at odd angles. He looked like a bug sprayed with insecticide, except for the mangled side of his face and neck.

  ‘Busy day,’ Watson said to one of the techs. They had spent most of the morning downtown in the tiny apartment of the decapitated taxi driver. That should have been enough work for a full week. But two corpses in one day?

  ‘I don’t get paid overtime for this,’ Mel grumbled.

  ‘Things are happening in Colorado Springs! Hmmm, maybe not a great ad for the tourism board.’

  Mel pursed his lips, which made his thick mustache bounce. ‘I don’t get overtime for listening to your jokes either.’

  ‘My husband’s the comedian,’ she said. ‘But it does emphasize how necessary my job is. Can I count on your vote for me as El Paso County Coroner? The election is less than a month away.’

  ‘I don’t vote,’ Mel said. ‘Never have.’

  Watson was shocked. ‘It’s your duty as an American citizen. Everyone should vote.’

  ‘I don’t want to be around all those people in the polling place. I’m not comfortable in a crowd.’ He waved a hand to indicate the sprawled body and the blood that pooled across the concrete step. ‘I prefer dead people.’

  ‘We’re in agreement there,’ Watson said. ‘But you can do a mail-in ballot.’

  ‘I don’t want to get on any lists. The government knows too much about me already. Haven’t you heard about black helicopters and FEMA camps? I’m not signing up in the voting registry.’

  She huffed. ‘You have a driver’s license. You’re already on government lists.’ She decided to give him a bumper sticker and a lawn sign for her campaign, whether he liked it or not.

  Mel looked uncomfortable, got back to work.

  She squatted beside the dead motel manager. ‘It’s nice just to have a normal vanilla shooting. Wooden stakes and garlic-stuffed heads were interesting at first, but they’re getting old.’

  Nathan Dodge, the senior officer on the scene, joined Watson. While Detective Carrow was investigating the stake murders and warning other potential victims, Dodge had drawn the lucky straw for this run-of-the-mill homicide. ‘Single GSW. Plenty of witnesses.’ He glanced at the victim’s head and neck, which looked like hamburger. ‘Shotgun, obviously. Small-caliber shell.’

  Watson scrutinized the shredded face and neck, the blood and skin fragments everywhere. ‘Effective enough at close range.’

  ‘Four fifty-one,’ Dodge said. ‘No doubt about it.’

  Watson turned her head to look up at him. ‘Are you the medical examiner now? On what do you base that conclusion?’

  ‘Because the shooter had a four fifty-one reloading press mounted to the table in the room.’ Dodge referred to his notepad. ‘The witnesses heard only some brief shouting, not a prolonged argument. It escalated quickly. The victim, the motel manager, was standing in the door of room forty-one. Considering where the blast hit and the position of the body, the perpetrator must have shot him as he was turning to leave, possibly to flee. Maybe the victim saw something when he opened the door to the room?’

  ‘I might hire you as part of my team if you’re looking for a job,’ she said. ‘So long as you vote for me.’

  ‘I always vote.’ Dodge gave Mel a disapproving glance. ‘But my vote is my own business, and I don’t tell anyone who I plan to choose.’

  ‘That is your right. Do we know the name of the room’s tenant?’

  ‘No records whatsoever,’ Dodge said. ‘There’s something fishy here. All the other guests are carefully recorded both on the ledger and in the computer, but not room forty-one. No records at all. No clue who did this.’ He scratched the side of his long jaw. ‘Could be this was a drug den or headquarters for some other illegal business. From the supplies, clothes, and equipment, it looks like people lived in the room for extended periods, not just overnight. Could be the killer kept his base here, had an under-the-table agreement with the manager, but the deal went bad.’

  Dodge clucked his tongue, continuing to muse as he stared through the open door. ‘There was an argument. The manager tried to flee. The killer shot him
, probably a wild impulse. This one’s a crime of passion, someone surprised into shooting.’

  Like a Hollywood reporter, Mel took pictures from every angle, not just the body but the concrete step, the turquoise door, which had also been splintered with spraying pellets from the shot. Other techs combed the interior of the room, bagging whatever they found, dusting for prints.

  The shooter had been impulsive and clumsy, and Watson doubted CSPD would have a difficult job identifying him. The stake killer was something else entirely.

  She got out her long tweezers and probed in the mangled skin of the dead man’s neck. She plucked out pieces of the shot and dropped the bloody bits of metal into a small plastic container from her evidence kit.

  As she extracted one fragment after another, she was surprised that some were square, some shapeless lumps, a few large, others tiny and jagged. They looked like pieces of coins, fragments of rings, even bits of chain. And they were bright. ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’

  She stood up with a quiet grunt and turned to the turquoise door, looking at the spots where pellets were embedded in the cheap wood. She plucked out another piece and saw bright metal that was definitely not lead shot.

  When Watson arrived at the scene, she had assumed that the shooting victim had nothing to do with the stake killer, but now … ‘Oh, shit.’

  Dodge pulled out his notebook and paused, ready to take down her observations. ‘What is it?’

  Watson pulled out her cell phone and speed dialed Detective Carrow. She turned away from Dodge as Carrow answered. ‘Hello, Detective? This is Dr Watson, the medical examiner.’

  He huffed on the other end of the line. ‘You really don’t have to introduce yourself every time you call me.’

  ‘A good coroner should follow every step of the process. I’m with a shooting victim at the Rambler Star Motel down on South Nevada.’

  ‘Heard about it. Isn’t Dodge there? I thought he was handling this one.’

  ‘He’s doing a fine job.’ She smiled at the older policeman, remembering that he voted. ‘But I’m afraid this case is going to fall in your lap as well.’