He held up his cell phone as if all the answers were there. “Allison’s death is all over the news. They don’t think Wendi’s responsible, of course, but they do think she’s in trouble.”
“If they only knew she was the one causing the trouble.”
Pike slid a button on his phone and a cackle of static filled the air before Vlad’s voice came on the line. “Hey, Pike, it’s me, Vlad. Sorry to leave a message on your phone but Auntie Nina isn’t picking up. I hope you two aren’t—oh, geez, no, gross. Okay, I’m going to erase that image out of my head . . . and maybe cauterize my brain. Anyway, I kind of ran into someone when I was leaving Celeste’s apartment this afternoon. Her name is Rose. Rose Carmichael?”
“She’s one of my models,” I said to no one in particular.
“Yeah. I guess I didn’t so much run into her as nearly run over her. But don’t worry, I didn’t. I didn’t hurt her . . . she was already dead.”
Something sank inside me. I yanked out my own phone to see that I had six missed calls, all from Vlad, all within the last thirty minutes. I speed-dialed him and waited, nerves welling up in my chest.
“Finally.”
“Vlad! I’m sorry, we were following up on another lead that didn’t really pan out.”
“Bad sex? Yeah, that happens. So while the rest of the team—a.k.a. me—was diligently working, I found Rose.”
“How did you even know it was her? You’ve never met her.”
“You mean how do I know it’s her? Because although she is currently sans attire, her purse was shoved underneath her. I pulled out her driver’s license.”
“Currently sans attire? Are you there with her now?”
“Yeah. I mean, I went across the street and got a drink—”
I felt the blood I had just drunk sink to my feet. “Vlad—”
“Geez! Not from her. There was a bloodmobile. Then I came over here to look after the body until you could stop whatever depraved thing you and Birdboy were doing and call me back.”
“Wait. Did you move her to get to her purse? Did you touch her? Are you touching her now? Stop touching her!”
Vlad snorted. “Because I have matchable fingerprints? Yeah. Maybe in 1873.”
“Where are you? How did you find her?”
“I’m just around the corner from Celeste’s place and I let my nose lead the way. She smelled robust.”
I felt my jaw tighten. “If you even think of nicking an artery before I get there, I will stake you myself.”
“Rule follower,” Vlad huffed.
Chapter Six
It didn’t take long for us to find Vlad and Rose—and Vlad was very right—even without her heart pumping, Rose’s blood gave off a robust, vibrant odor. My mouth started to water despite myself.
“Oh, Vlad.”
Other than a pair of white panties and a soiled bra, Rose was naked. Her lean body looked spider-like; her arms and legs were outstretched at odd angels. She was balanced on a load of black trash bags and general debris. She wasn’t a victim of the same bloody destruction that Allison was. She was battered, severely, then her carotid artery was punctured. I could see where Wendi’s fangs went in, and it looked like she raked a bite down, tearing the flesh halfway down Rose’s neck. Judging by the bruises on her hands and arms, her fingernails ragged and torn and the blood drying on her fingertips, Rose had put up a hell of a fight. Though no matter how hard, it would never be a match for Wendi’s newfound strength.
Pike winced when he saw her. “You think Wendi did this?”
“Hard to imagine there’s another supermodel-killing vampire out there.”
“Well, someone tried to kill or unkill Wendi.”
I nodded, considering. “So you think this might be the work of the sire?”
Pike shrugged and looked at Vlad. “What do you think? And is she”—he waggled his hand toward Rose’s still-staring eyes and dropped his voice to a low whisper—“all dead?”
Vlad carefully plucked Rose’s bony wrist between his two fingers and let it drop again. It flopped unceremoniously back against the garbage bag it was resting on. “Yeah, I mean for now.”
Pike grimaced. “What exactly does that mean?”
“She’s dead dead for now, but Wendi could always come back—if that’s who sired her—and give her the old two-fang revival.”
“Thanks, Doctor. He means that a sire can come back even to a body that’s completely dead and revive her by having her drink his blood.”
“Or hers and hers.” A slow smile spread across Vlad’s face. “That’s hot.”
Pike was openly gaping now. “A vampire can bring back a corpse at any time? That’s sick and awesome. Is that why everyone keeps seeing Elvis?”
“Pike . . .”
“Forty-eight hours at best,” Vlad clarified. “They still have to have their own blood and all their factory parts.” He held up a finger. “Not bagged. They need to be as organic as possible.”
“How . . . responsible of you.”
I snatched Rose’s purse from Vlad and tucked it back in the garbage pile, trying to figure out how to make a Dooney & Bourke shoulder bag look natural on a corpse and a pile of trash bags. I gave Rose one last glance, eyes trailing over the wounds on her neck. “It does look like Wendi’s handiwork.”
Pike crossed his arms in front of his chest. “But why leave her naked? Is that normal for you guys?”
Vlad cleared his throat. “First of all, I would prefer not to be lumped in with ‘you guys.’ Wendi’s a newbie, and whatever she does should not be the benchmark for the rest of us.”
“Okay, okay, sorry, geez. I’m still learning.”
I glared at Vlad. “Chill out, nephew.” Then something just over his left shoulder caught my eye. I sighed and went to it, crouching down. A heap of fabric, blood soaked and balled together, was halfheartedly stuffed behind the Dumpster. I pulled a pen out of my purse and used it to poke at the wad.
“Well, I think I know why Rose is nearly naked.”
Pike crouched down beside me. “What is all that?”
“The jeans and T-shirt that Wendi was wearing yesterday. She must have been covered in Allison’s and Rose’s blood.”
“Great. Now we know she’s relatively clean, well fed, and has a taste for supermodels. I would say that helps us not at all,” I said with a groan.
My cell phone pinged and I swiped it on, then groaned a little louder. The cheery old-fashioned alarm clock icon was vibrating all over my screen, reminding me that there was now only one day left until the start of fashion week. With all due respect for the dead, I was now down two models and not a lick closer to stopping the bloodthirsty one.
“I’m going to head back to the house,” Vlad said. “I can throw out some emails and see if any of the Empowerment members know anything about Wendi or her sire.”
“I can give you a ride,” Pike told him. Then, to me, “You ready? We can call the police in the car and give them an anonymous tip.”
I glanced back at Rose, nodding. Even from this distance I could see the little pops of blood where the vessels in her eyes, hands, and around her mouth had burst. She had fought.
“No, actually, you guys go on ahead. I’m only a few blocks from the studio and I should see who I can pull together. You’ll do all you can, right? And call the police?”
Pike and Vlad both nodded and disappeared out the end of the alley. I could see Pike pulling out his phone and beginning to dial. I didn’t want to leave Rose, dead, exposed, tossed away like garbage at the hands of a predator—at the hands of someone like me. But I couldn’t stay with her. I couldn’t cover her lest I ruin any evidence. I didn’t want to think of all the wrecked bodies I’d left behind in my past.
“Ms. LaShay, we meet again.”
Detective Moyer surprised me, his cruiser pulling up to the mouth of the alley just as I turned to leave. Until that moment, I had never realized how dumb “we meet again” sounds when it’s not coming from a superhe
ro’s arch nemesis.
I cleared my throat and nodded. “I was just going to call you.”
His bushy eyebrows raised up to where his hair should have been. “You were going to call me on yourself?”
“I don’t understand.”
“We got a call in saying there were three suspicious persons hanging around the alley back here.”
“And you came out for that?”
“There’s been a rash of robberies around this area, Ms. LaShay. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
I took a small step back toward Rose, suddenly protective. “Of course not.”
“Were you one of the three out here? Caller said it looked like a woman and two men. Possible vagrants.”
That tore it. “Vagrants? This, sir, is Oscar de la Renta. Vintage. Hand sewn. Impeccable.” I spun, giving him a full look at classic design genius, my black hair perfectly complementing the charcoal gray as it swirled over my shoulder. “Vagrant, ha!”
Moyer just stared at me as if every word that came out of my mouth was nonsensical and I could feel my nostrils flare, annoyance flaring up in my stomach.
“There’s a body over there, Detective. We came across it. Her name is Rose Carmichael.”
Moyer got out of the car and followed me to where Rose lay, his eyes going big. He pulled his radio from his shoulder, mumbled a few numbers and words, and looked back at me, face slightly ashen. “Who were you with?”
“Pike and my nephew, Vlad.”
“And you just came upon . . .” He waved his hand toward Rose and I nodded.
“What exactly were the three of you doing out here?”
I was caught off guard and my mouth fell open just the tiniest bit. “Jogging,” I blurted quickly. “We jog. Together. This is our route.”
Moyer’s head bobbed as he looked up and down the length of the alley. “You jog here?”
“Totally,” I said nonchalantly.
He pointed a stubby finger toward me. “So you go jogging in that vintage Oscar de la Hoya dress? With the, uh, good sewing and whatnot?”
Everything inside me told me to nod silently and just let him think what he wanted.
But I’ve never been one to follow best practice.
I put my hands on my hips. “Vintage Oscar de la Renta, not de la Hoya. Hand stitched. No whatnot. Isn’t the murder of this poor, innocent ingénue more important than my choice in sportswear?”
I could hear the rest of the units pulling up, the sounds of car doors opening and closing. Moyer glanced over his shoulders and beckoned the first responders over toward us. I began edging away but he snapped back with a speed that shocked me and pinned me with a glare. “I’m going to need you to stay right there.”
I pressed my hand over my nose, trying to daintily block the stink of rapidly expelling gases that Moyer and the other breathers wouldn’t be able to smell for at least twenty-four more hours, while trying to look properly affected like an actual human would. I shifted my weight, growing slightly impressed as Moyer directed the cops and paramedics with a fair amount of authority. I tried not to look at my phone, tried to keep my eyes from the alarm clock alerts telling me exactly how little time I had left before I was expected to show a full fashion collection to the world.
Moyer finished barking orders to his officers and to the gentleman I assumed was the coroner based on his sensible black business-tennis shoes and the paper thin nylon jacket he wore, the word CORONER stenciled in white lettering on the back. Moyer came back to me and whipped out the same cop notebook he had earlier today and did one of those weird lick-the-lead of his pencil things before dropping into inter-rogational mode.
“So you just happened to come across this body on your jogging trip this morning?”
I cocked my head, wanting to point out that in a city of 8.4 million people where just about a murder a day is the norm, Detective Fire Plug and I meeting up twice in one day wasn’t that statistically significant. But I decided against it.
“Yes.” I nodded simply.
“Because you and your buddies run around here regularly.”
“Yes.” Another nod.
“You weren’t stunned to see a dead body?”
I am a dead body. My mind was screaming out all sorts of irrational one-liners and I shifted my weight, pressing my teeth together before answering, “Of course I was.”
“But not one of you thought it would be a good idea to call nine-one-one? To call the police?”
“My nephew was on his way to do it right as you pulled up.”
Moyer’s eyes cut to the cell phone in my hand and then back up to me. “Any particular reason you didn’t use that phone right there to make the call?”
“Um. Nope.” I paused. “Because I was stunned. So much. I was so stunned by seeing the dead body that I guess I forgot that I had this cell phone right here in my hand.”
“Because you just stumbled on her.”
I hated the way Moyer was finishing my sentences, but when I glanced at him, he raised his caterpillar eyebrows, his flat eyes challenging. I felt an instant growl roil through me; challenge wasn’t something from which I was used to backing down.
I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t “stumble” on Rose’s body if she was covered in thirteen pounds of stinky trash and I had a Google Street View pointing to where she lay. The scent of death is so distinct and strong, it’s like a natural homing beacon to the supernatural crowd. But of course, I couldn’t exactly spout that out to dear Detective Moyer without getting tossed in the loony bin or having to make the very unladylike (and un-UDA-acceptable) decision to eat him, lest he try and arrest me.
“So, Ms. LaShay, you find our victim here and don’t call the cops because you’re too”—his eyes flashed toward mine, the disbelief in his obvious—“stunned. Or was it that you thought perhaps this one was taking a nap, too?”
I was pretty sure that steam was welling up inside my hollow gut, and I immediately regretted signing my UDA afterlife insurance policy, because some people just need a good throat-ripping-out.
“I was fairly certain Rose was dead.”
“Because you come upon a lot of dead bodies—while you’re jogging, while you’re working.”
“Are you trying to ask me something, Detective?”
Moyer’s expression fell to one of pure innocence. “I’m just trying to figure out what happened to this poor girl just like you are, Ms. LaShay. And I’m just trying to find out what exactly it is that you have to do with it.”
I pressed my palm to my forehead and closed my eyes, doing a mental count to ten and reminding myself that a man this thick probably tasted like old gym mat.
“Are you saying that you suspect me of something, Detective Moyer? Do you want to ask me something specific? Because if that’s the case, I would prefer a proper interrogation including a trip downtown and a cup of that legendarily bad NYPD coffee.”
And that’s how I ended up in a squad car that smelled like urine and regret, speeding through the city streets while Kenny Rogers reminded me to “know when to fold ’em” from the radio in the front seat.
Detective Moyer kept assuring me that I wasn’t “technically” being arrested, but he continued to give me that stare-down-his-nose look of disapproval as he “escorted” (his word) me to a small, cinderblock square excuse for an office. There was a couch lined up against one wall, the whole thing made up of one giant circus-orange cushion that was probably teeming with more bacteria than a Times Square toilet seat. I was relieved when Moyer ushered me to a tiny laminate round table surrounded with plastic chairs, less so when he set a steaming Styrofoam cup of what smelled like the most horrific mix of burnt coffee and tire fire ever created.
He actually smiled and I actually felt sorry for him. I could see that his eyes were sunken and his cheeks had deflated over the year. The brackets around his mouth dipped straight down, giving him a droopy dog sort of look, and I found myself wanting to pet his thinning hair and assu
re him that everything would be all right.
“Look, Ms. LaShay, I’m just trying to get to the bottom of Ms. Carmichael’s murder, and lo and behold, here you are. Tell me the truth. We both know you weren’t out jogging dressed like that.”
And for a split second, I wanted to tell him everything. Not that Vlad had called and had been the one to find Rose, not that Allison had been viciously murdered by Wendi, but everything everything. Sitting down in that hard plastic chair in that nondescript square of cinderblocks made me realize how tired I really was. My phone was throbbing, letting me know in hourly animation that my dream of being a premiere Fashion Week designer was slipping away because in my life, the dead and the undead were far more normal than dreams and eternal bliss.
Moyer took my reflection time for insolence. “Still not going to talk, huh?”
I was about to answer, apologize, even, when the door cracked open and a pup officer poked his head in.
“Sorry to interrupt. Can I see you, please, Detective?”
Moyer’s eye went to the pup cop and then to me. He sighed and stood. “I’ll be right back. Stay here.”
The door clicked shut behind him with a slight echo and I leaned forward, resting my head on my arms. I figured I should probably just pack up my studio and head back to San Francisco. As much as I thought I could create a fairly normal afterlife after all this time, I was beginning to realize that would never happen.
I glanced up at the clock, each minute ticking by with a maddening click. I glanced at the door, willing it to open, willing Moyer to walk in, say “forget this whole thing,” and usher me out.
I kept waiting.
I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next, but I seriously hoped it wouldn’t be a full booking. Fingerprinting I was okay with—even the new high-tech “roll your thumb on this track pad” was fine with me—fingerprints don’t change, even in the afterlife, and mine were completely normal. It was the mug shot I had an issue with. Obviously photography was not any government agency’s strong suit; I had seen enough DMV photos to know that. (Mine, however, was rather spectacular despite the fact that the wonderfully grinning woman in the photo wasn’t me.) But it wasn’t my vanity that the photo would be awful that steered me away from mugging for the police camera; it was the knowledge that there wouldn’t be any photo at all. Just the little ticker tape telling the world how tall I was (or wasn’t) and the identification box floating in midair. It’s no legend that vampires can’t be seen on film—it’s fact. And under the watchful eyes of the New York City Police Department, it would be a little difficult to explain.
On the Hunt Page 38