by Blake Pierce
Adele shuddered and nodded once.
“I need you and Agent Renee back stateside.”
Adele closed her eyes, focusing, then nodded. “Not a problem at all, ma’am. Back to the states it is.”
“And Adele…” Ms. Jayne’s normally stoic expression twitched. “This one is becoming a headache. The killer is moving too fast—across countries. If this gets out, given current political climates in two of the countries, it could spell disastrous. Understand? Executive Foucault should have already spoken to you.”
“Political how?”
“Let me worry about that. You worry about catching this guy—fast. Understand? We can’t have another death.”
Adele nodded and then lowered her phone, clicking it, placing it back in her pocket. For a moment, she just stood in the cool hall, the empty area across from the closed interrogation room door. There went that theory. It couldn’t have possibly been Mr. Glaude. He was a scumbag, and by the sound of things, a scumbag who had gotten away with murder. But not this murder. She went to the door, tapped, and opened. John looked out at her from where he’d been taunting the felon by the looks of things. Mr. Glaude looked even more scared than when she’d left.
But when John spotted her gaze, he frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She just shook her head and gestured at him. He paused, then nodded significantly toward their subject. “You’re sure?” he said.
Adele said, stiffly, “Not him.”
John now turn fully, swiveling in his chair and glaring at her. “Hang on, are you—”
“John, it’s not him. Come.”
John got to his feet and gave one last long look at Mr. Glaude. “You have my word,” he said, in a slow, ominous voice, “the judge will take another look at your case.”
Then he stomped out of the room, shutting the door hard behind him. In the hall, he rounded, facing Adele. “What?” he demanded.
Adele looked up at him, crossed her arms, and stood with one foot just ahead of the other. “I just got a call,” she said. “Third body.” She filled her partner in on the details, and by the end, some of the anger seemed to have faded from John’s expression to be replaced by a quiet resignation. He shrugged, staring at her. “What now?”
“Now, we go to America.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Badgers kept burrows, lions their dens, and federal agents had planes. Once more, Adele pressed her shoulder against Agent Renee, shifting a bit to try to find a more comfortable position. No time for first class this flight—haste was of the essence. Already, they were halfway across the ocean, soaring from one continent to the next as if it were as simple as casting flowers to the wind.
For Adele, the journey was a familiar one. She glanced at her partner, though, and vaguely wondered how John might fare in the States. He’d often teased her about being from America, as the French were wont to do, but now, both of them were on the hunt.
Sonoma Valley—not far from where Adele had settled while working for the FBI. She’d visited once or twice before. Adele had already been over the case details and now she could see them flickering across her mind’s eyes as she adjusted, sliding her shoulders against the rough, uncomfortable backrest of the economy seat. Above, the nozzle of cool air wasn’t working, and her small, personal TV set into the seat before her wouldn’t turn on, no matter what she tried.
To add insult to injury, the air smelled a little bit of a dirty diaper, and every few minutes she could hear the quiet mewling of the child from two seats over who had likely provided the fragrance.
Still, she’d suffered worse. Then again, not much worse.
Next to her, John was stiff as a log, sleeping, his head pushed against the plastic cover surrounding the pill-shaped window. The visor was open, displaying clouds and the long stretch of the airplane’s wing, the giant engines humming and propelling them through the air.
After another series of futile readjustments, which ended in more discomfort, Adele finally closed her eyes, trying to think. The idea of falling asleep as John had was far too great an aspiration and she didn’t dare tempt herself with such false hope, but at the very least she hoped she could rest her eyes.
And, if the steady stream of odor from the child in 33B continued, she might request a couple of ear plugs for her nostrils to rest those as well.
As she tried to settle, the details of the case spun through her mind. A third victim—middle-aged, female, this time in California. Three countries, three victims, different ages, different genders. All of them connected to wine somehow. One, a grape farmer, the other a sommelier, and this last one an amateur winemaker. The woman’s car had been discovered outside a wine-making supply store. Abandoned, a small box of purchased items left discarded on the ground, a shattered decanter left scattered across the asphalt. Had the killer ambushed her? Had he snuck up from behind?
Adele winced and readjusted, turning a bit to press her cheek against the headrest and her rear against John’s upper thigh. At least no one had booked the seat between them.
The thoughts didn’t end at the case though. Other pulses of consideration haunted her, tempting her with various smatterings of despair. Loudest of all was a simple consideration: What if they were chasing this guy around the world just to give him the time he needed to flee somewhere else? A perpetual game of cat and mouse where the mouse was always three steps ahead.
Bodies would fall, agents would follow, and the killer would escape.
They couldn’t keep doing this. They needed something—a lead, an idea, a clue, something to narrow the gap.
Adele could feel a bit of sweat now forming on her forehead and she opened an eye, glaring angrily up at the malfunctioning air nozzle. She sighed as discomfort settled complete. She stretched, reaching up and twisting at the nozzle a few more times—but no air, no luck.
Adele’s eyes lowered and she glanced across the aisle, perhaps in search of something to envy—some passenger comfortable beneath a stream of air watching their working TV.
Instead, though, her eyes skimmed over a couple of sleeping passengers and a large man who took up two seats, and landed on a small girl.
The girl was watching Adele, her nose scrunched in curiosity.
Adele smiled and mimed fanning her hand at her face and then sticking her tongue out and panting like a dog.
The young girl giggled, but then returned her attention to the item in her hand. Adele went still all of a sudden, her silly expression fading. The young girl had a small Carambar beneath her fingers. She was rolling it along the table, half-unwrapped.
When she noticed Adele staring, the child extended the candy, offering it across the aisle.
Adele shook her head and exchanged a small smile in return. She turned away from the young girl now, troubled, her mind spinning again. Carambars. The only lead she had in her mother’s case. A memory in a memory buried in a coffin of memories.
She swallowed and winced, trying to focus. Derailing now wouldn’t help anything. Try as she might, though, Adele couldn’t focus. Like watching a projector playing bits and pieces of one movie, then switching to another, then back.
She opened her eyes again, glancing toward the little girl. She was sucking on a straw, a small box of juice pressed and crushed beneath her small hand. The girl no longer seemed to notice Adele’s attention. But Adele, for her part, stared at the juice box.
Her mouth went dry. The heat from the failed nozzle above had also caused her to be parched.
Wine…
Why wine?
She stared as a small little red splotch appeared on the corner of the young girl’s lip. She reached up, wiping it away, then with a sucking sound suggesting she’d emptied her juice box, she pushed against her sleeping father’s form next to her, whispering for another.
Wine. Red wine.
That’s what the amateur had the ingredients to make. Some sort of red wine… The sommelier had served something to the killer… a single glass—only carrying
the girl’s prints though. But the glass… it had red wine in it. Just a bit, only a small amount remaining, but wine all the same. Again, red.
Why wine?
Adele fished her phone from her pocket, frowning. She cycled to her settings, connected to the airplane’s Wi-Fi, then, desperately, focused, she scanned to the file John had sent her the day before. Her eyes flicked down the device, searching…
***
John jerked up, blinking and wincing against the buzzing light emanating from the seat next to him.
“Adele?” he grunted.
She looked up, her face haggard, but her eyes wide with excitement. Her phone was bright and luminescent against a backdrop of a mostly quiet plane now. The lights had been dimmed and even most the personal TVs were off.
John grunted. “What are you doing?”
She waved her phone at him, nodding to herself, then, as if wanting to include him in the joy of the gesture, nodding to him as well. “I found it,” she murmured. “I found it.”
John raised an eyebrow, turning fully now to face her. He reached up and rubbed at the side of his forehead, feeling the ridge lines where his skin had indented from pressing into the plastic window. Ahead, the chair had leaned back, scrunching his long legs. He wished he’d insisted on the aisle seat. But also, he got sick on planes and windows helped. He hated flying, though he’d be damned if he ever let Adele find out. He’d never hear the end of it.
“Do you know what type of grapes the German farmer cultivated?” she said, maintaining somewhat of an effort to keep her voice down.
Judging by a couple of nasty looks from the passengers across the aisle, she failed in this endeavor. John returned their glares, and they looked away, pretending as if they’d been stretching. He glanced back at his partner.
“Grapes? No.”
“Exclusively,” she said, “he cultivated Spatburgunder.”
“Bless you.”
“No,” she snapped. “They were red grapes, John.”
He nodded slowly. “Are… are you all right?”
“John,” Adele snapped. “Listen—he cultivated red grapes. The American victim was creating red wine. The French victim had red wine in the bottom of her glass. Those splotches on the wall in the kill room… also red!”
John had never considered himself a particularly stupid man. But sometimes, around Adele, he wondered if he were slow on the uptake or if she were simply confounding in the worst way possible. “Blood is red,” he supplied helpfully.
“John… Yes, it is,” Adele said. “The wine is red, and the blood is red. And all of them are connected to red wine. But also, blood was taken—exsanguinated. Do you understand?”
And, to his near astonishment, he did. John gaped. “You—you don’t think he’s drinking it, do you?”
Adele shrugged and pocketed her phone once more, nodding to herself again.
“Hang on,” he interjected. “He’s not a vampire, is he? You’re aware this is the real world, right?”
“Well… sort of. I’ve been researching people who drink blood.”
“Vampires.” John nodded.
“No… People who actually do this, not just on TV.”
John paused for a respectable amount of time, then volunteered, “Vampires.”
“Not vampires, John. Sanguinarians. They drink other people’s blood—for a variety of reasons. I think our guy might be one. He drains them, John. This connection to wine, red wine, and the missing blood. It can’t be a coincidence, can it? What if he’s not just bleeding them—but also drinking it? At least some of it?”
John stared at her, slack-jawed. He scratched at his chin. “How… how exactly does that help us?”
At this, Adele sighed and looked dismayed. “I don’t exactly know. It’s not really a lead…” But then she added, “It is a motive, however. It might help… Why these three victims specifically? Why across different countries? Don’t you see—if he’s drinking their blood, there’s a reason behind it. That’s our connection. That will bring us to him.”
John gave a soft little grunt. “I hope so. Now, Adele… Sleep. You look like a vampire yourself.”
It was testament to just how tired she was that instead of retorting, Adele actually closed her eyes, leaned back, and began to breathe slowly, doing her best to follow his advice.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Adele and John scanned the cars slipping through the roundabout outside the terminals. After a few moments, Adele tipped her head toward an unmarked gray sedan with tinted windows. The front driver’s side window was lowered, and she spotted a familiar face.
As the car rolled to a stop in front of the curb where the two agents from France stood, Adele called, “Hey, Sam, good to see you!”
The young man in the front seat smiled in return and unlocked the doors, gesturing for them to enter. He spoke rapidly, rattling off, “Need help with the luggage?”
John wrinkled his nose in a distasteful expression, like someone moving from a cool air-conditioned room out into searing summer heat. He’d never much liked speaking in English, and Agent Sam Carter had a way of talking so quickly even Adele sometimes struggled to keep up. He had the manner and, in her assessment, appearance of a golden retriever, with dyed blond hair an inch past protocol, an upturned nose, and chocolate eyes.
Agent Carter reached across the seat and gripped John by the hand, before the French agent could even react. He began pumping John’s hand up and down, genially, and in a chipper tone, declared, “Welcome to the States. Is it your first time?”
Adele winced, reading the lines pressed around John’s cheeks and the glower in his eyes. “Thank you,” he said, tight-lipped.
Carter shook John’s hand a little bit longer. Adele had always known Agent Carter to be a friendly sort. She had appreciated it when she’d been at the agency. But she could tell, just by watching, that John was looking forward to wiping his hand off on the seat next to him and glaring at the back of their driver’s head for the journey north to the crime scene.
“Well, buckle up, you guys!” Sam said, still cheerful, oblivious to Renee’s glower.
Adele winced over the back seat at John, and he just glared at her. She half extended a hand as if to shake as well, and he tucked his hand deep in his pocket.
Adele could sympathize somewhat. In France, people didn’t express their affection in the same way with complete strangers. There had been times in Paris where Adele had walked down a street without a single person nodding or waving at her. She supposed John would have to acclimate on this side of the pond.
The car took them away from the airport, along the stretch of highway, meandering through the traffic, and then heading north, toward where the body had been dumped.
Through the duration of the journey, Agent Carter tried to strike up a conversation, and while Adele answered his queries in short, single-syllable responses, John ignored him completely. Eventually, even the gregarious agent fell quiet. The sky was laden with clouds, and more swept in across the horizon. A gray tinge eventually fell over the highway, like a funeral procession heralding their approach. Adele shivered, leaning against the side of the car, her head resting against the cool glass as she endeavored to parse out what she knew about the case.
They reached the crime scene about thirty minutes later. By now, some of John’s bad mood had rubbed off on Agent Carter. The happy-go-lucky young agent from San Francisco had lost some of the spark in his Labrador eyes, and he wasn’t smiling anymore.
Which, coincidentally, meant John was.
The tall agent stretched his legs and stepped out of the vehicle onto the small, wooded path. Adele followed suit, and was immediately assailed by the scent of oak and stale sap. Pinpoint leaves scattered the ground, but sweeping crews had been by, dusting off the trail. The edges of the road were lined with large piles of these gathered leaves, and Adele spotted rustling and trembling detritus, suggesting a squirrel or chipmunk had found a safe haven amidst the dross.
<
br /> She walked along a cracked asphalt road that seemed in poor use.
“Body’s not here anymore,” said Agent Carter, briskly, lest he entice John’s ire again. He waved a hand toward the trees. “Couple of joggers found her. Bled dry.”
Adele looked around and said, “This wasn’t the scene where she was killed?”
Agent Carter shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. No blood spatter. She was dumped here.”
Adele and John moved toward three orange traffic cones set up in a triangular shape which marked out where the body had been discovered in the center of the road. She nudged John and nodded. “Think he just pushed her out of the back of a car?”
John scratched his chin. He replied in English, his accent thick. “Possibly. Could’ve come from the woods?”
Adele looked to the trees, and at the slope angle leading up to the trail. She pointed further down the path. “Would’ve dumped her there if from the woods. The trail on either side here is too steep. Would’ve made our killer’s job a ton harder, lugging a body up this way.” She hummed in thought and shook her head in finality. “No—I think he was in a car. Dumped her in the middle of the road now that he was done with her.”
Adele and John moved along the trail a bit longer, but there was nothing much to find. The body had been taken to the morgue, and the report would be forthcoming. Beyond that, other vehicles had come through, ruining any potential chance at finding tire tracks.
Still, one could never be too careful. “We should photograph the road,” she said to Agent Carter.
He nodded. “On it. Agent Grant suggested the same.”
Adele smiled softly at the mention of her old boss. “This wine-making shop—Artisan’s Supplies… how far is it?”