Black Market Blood

by Francis Gideon

  A weight spread across Chaz’s chest. Was Reggie’s interest in Sully part of his job? Or just coincidence? Nothing is coincidence. If Reggie was a PI, it meant he probably had a lot of photo equipment to catch cheating husbands or insurance fraud with monsters. When Chaz went back and looked again at Reggie’s arrest for the electronics store theft, he realized half of the entertainment equipment was also usable for digital photography. Shit. This is bad. What had started out as a search to protect Sully from a john on a power trip now seemed like the underground conspiracy he worried about.

  But if Reggie did have high-tech equipment, why bother taking a picture of Sully on a burner phone? If he was supposed to find Sully for someone, why risk Sully seeing him take the photo? It didn’t make sense. Chaz had almost written the whole thing off as a coincidence again, until he scrolled down to the last-known address for the PI license. The proximity to the beach where Patrick Mortimer’s body had been found made his blood run cold.

  “What do you have?” Declan asked. He sat down at his desk across from Chaz’s. “A new lead? You seem this close to breaking out the red thread to link all your clues together.”

  “Hah. I do?” Chaz tried to shrug off his concern. “A name came up, but I don’t know how much I trust the eyewitnesses, so I don’t think it’ll pertain to this case.”

  Chaz made a show of crumpling up the paper he’d written Reggie’s new address on. Instead of throwing out the ball, though, he slipped his hand under his desk and put it in his pocket. Declan didn’t seem to notice. He shuffled through the files on his desk, his brows furrowed. Chaz spotted the green paper from the medical examiner’s office—the kind for sensitive and urgent materials.

  “Is that the tox screen?”

  “Yeah, it came in quick. Even though they had to redo several of the tests….” Declan tilted his head. He seemed to reread the same line over and over again. “Oh no.”

  “What?” Chaz sifted through the material on his desk. There should be a copy of the file for him too. He found it nearly buried under his witness statements and boat licenses. How had he missed this? With the file in his hand, it was easy to see what Declan was worried about.

  “Patrick Mortimer. He was a vampire.”

  “Yeah, I saw,” Declan said, disgust evident in his voice. He chucked the file onto the desk and ran a hand over his clean-shaven face. “Doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it’s a false positive? Wouldn’t we get a false positive for vampirism if he was bit before he died?”

  “Not necessarily. And that’s why Melinda ran the tests more than once. The water. Of course.” Chaz gasped. “When vamps die, they mummify—like the guy in the alley. But if Patrick had died and gone right into the water, it makes even more sense he soaked it up like a sponge. That’s why he made such a weird noise when we pulled him out.”

  “So he was already a vamp before going in?”

  “Looks like it,” Chaz said, going over the report. “He may not have known, though.”

  “How can you not know you’re a vamp? Like, come on.”

  “There is a period of dormancy. At least, that’s what Melinda says here,” Chaz said, trying to cover up his intimate knowledge with the big jargony terms Melinda had used in her report as he relayed the information to Declan. The dormancy period could last anywhere from one to three weeks before the signs showed up. Like teething, loss of appetite, poor sleep. After which, sun-sickness was the first indication, followed by the craving for blood, which was sometimes misinterpreted as a craving for meat. It was hard to tell how far Patrick was in his period of transition, especially because there was no blood in his stomach.

  “But what are the odds that someone like Patrick didn’t remember being bitten?” Declan asked, still skeptical. “I can buy the dormancy period making him feel as if he wasn’t sick, but come on. You remember someone biting you.”

  “It’s not always biting that infects people, though. Any blood-to-blood contact can spread vampirism.”

  “Right, right. But you’re telling me that this kid could have gotten a paper cut and then touched vampire blood by accident and he would have never known?”

  “It would take longer than that brief contact, I suspect. But…. Oh.” Chaz shuddered as he put everything together. “If he had sex with a vampire without a condom, it could be possible to spread it, especially if their contact was rough. And we know he was with all kinds of people.”

  “But he had condoms in his room.”

  “And how many men would pay extra to not feel that barrier? He could have been infected that way.”

  Declan seemed stumped with this information. He considered it a long time before speaking. “Patrick could have been infected any number of ways, sure. I can buy that. But the fact still remains that he died by a vampire’s hand—or teeth, or whatever. Along with Hector, our boat guy. So what the hell is going on?”

  “What did Melinda say? A dedicated killer. He sucked them both dry. And we know now, they’re both vampires, so the blood would have been sour both times.” Chaz made a face. He couldn’t imagine the dedication—and self-hatred—behind that act. A vampire wasn’t killing these two victims because they acted out of line. He was killing them because of what they represented to him: people who were disgusting. People who were fiends. But was it the sex work or the vampirism, or a combination of both, that enraged this guy?

  “We have to change our profile,” Chaz said. “The pattern is completely different now. And I bet this isn’t his first time.”

  “What do you mean? These were pretty sloppy jobs.”

  “But he killed two at once. Melinda confirms it in her report—both men died around the same time, but then their bodies were dumped in different places. That takes skill to pull off, especially if there were witnesses.”

  “What makes you think there are witnesses? The boat could have been filled with those drug teddy bears. Not sex workers.”

  “There’s always some kind of witness,” Chaz said. “And my bet is that a vampire den is involved. Small communities form there and the rules are different than how you or I may think.”

  “Vamps have rules? And honor?”

  “Yeah, they do. Just never makes sense to the outside eye. So we have to go in.”

  “Well, I think it’s a fucking waste of time,” Declan said, rubbing his hands over his face again. “Good luck getting anyone to talk to you.”

  Chaz had his hand on his desk phone, but he put it down. His frustration grew inside of him. There was no way anyone would follow this case now that there were two vamps as victims murdered by another vamp. “We’re going to get this stolen from us, aren’t we?”

  Declan shrugged. “It’s now monster-on-monster crime. So, no case law for our investigation.”

  Chaz scoffed. The way the law was written now, there was no way for any supernatural creature to be a victim of a crime. Supernaturals couldn’t be harassed, assaulted, murdered, or raped. But they could commit those crimes and be charged for them, even if there was no intent evident. Being supernatural was all the intent people needed to convict. Chaz knew that all too well from his time in the legal system.

  The only exception to this rule was if a supernatural creature was murdered by another supernatural and if the victim passed as a human. Because so much of a guilty murder verdict involved intent to commit a crime, the only way to gain conviction was if the victim was thought to be normal—so the intent had been to kill a human. For monsters who were visibly creatures, though, there was no point. A werewolf killed in wolf form would not have his killer brought to justice, but a werewolf who was in human form might have a chance. There were still too many vagaries and legalities that made Chaz’s head swim and his heart hurt.

  “Why the fuck don’t we have monster units?” Chaz asked.

  “Same reason why we can’t do much investigating of monster-on-monster crime. It won’t hold up in court.” Declan shrugged. He seemed too beat down to care about the injustice. “We did have a pr
otected unit sent to places where monsters were rumored to be so that civilians were protected. Remember the large green-and-black industrial size vans? I think it was around the time when you and I, you know, first met.”

  Of course Chaz remembered those vans; they always seemed so huge when he was fifteen and working his first job. He should have realized that a vehicle like that meant trouble and should have stayed away from the neighborhood. He would have been a completely different person if he’d just stayed away.

  “You okay?” Declan said. “I didn’t mean to mention us, if that’s what got you spooked.”

  “No, honestly, I just… I guess I just forgot about those vans. I forgot about a lot back then.” Chaz tried to laugh, but it came out like a cough. He remembered the feeling of his knees on concrete when he’d been with Declan—an unnamed man in blue then—and he thought it was so odd that Declan seemed just as afraid of the green-and-black vans as he’d been that night. Probably afraid of being caught fucking on the job.

  “You know, I forgot a lot too,” Declan said. “Probably best to forget the past and work with the future anyway.”

  But the present moment, Chaz thought desperately. What happens to that? He shook off his morose and self-pitying ways and tried to focus on his work. “Do you know why they got rid of those black-and-green vans? By the time I was on the foot patrol, they weren’t something I had to work with.”

  “The civilians felt like they were being watched,” Declan said. “They were being turned into monsters under surveillance and wanted freedom.”

  “Freedom even when they were in danger? Even when there were suspicious deaths that were adding up?”

  Declan nodded. “Oh yeah. I mean, how can anyone feel free if they’re watched? It’s not possible. And the vans’ presence was too much to maintain, anyway, on tax dollars. So it was phased out. And replaced with nothing. I mean, we used to have inherited shifters in the police to try and balance the presence of monsters and humans on the force, but the Judge kind of ruined that. You don’t destroy half of Canada without ruining a couple jobs while you’re at it.”

  “It still seems unfair, though. Now all our monster work gets funneled onto PIs who have no morals or it goes to gang retribution. Everything would be easier if we just had a division devoted to monsters that didn’t use military presence or if we just allowed monsters on the force.”

  “Maybe. But honestly, no one wants to hear this. To everyone else—both in and outside of Toronto—they tried to solve this problem, but the solution didn’t work. So we have to move on. At least we got to keep the riot gear from the protection unit, you know? There’s still something to protect the people.”

  “I hardly think riot gear will do anything but encourage violence. It’s barely a Band-Aid solution, so they need to try again to fix this problem. There’s a cost when you don’t do something, and it’s these people’s lives we’re investigating now, already too late. So we have to do something now.”

  “Huh. Wouldn’t have pegged you for an activist.”

  “What? I’m not. I’m just….” Chaz tried to take a deep breath. He couldn’t let too much of his rage show without making people question his own alliances. His normal declaration had come at a high cost—Nat’s life. So he couldn’t blow it over a silly case about vampires. He had to remain calm and stoic. “I’m not an activist. I just want to clean up the Toronto streets, but I feel like my hands are tied.”

  “Well, we should untie them. Because until we do, even if we get the guy, solve this case, and everything is done up with a bright bow, no one is going to prosecute it,” Declan said. “Hell, I think the police commissioner may even give the guy an award.”

  Chaz nodded, the sinking feeling in his stomach growing. “The only way he’d be charged is if the law changed.”

  “Or he harms a human. But that’s never going to happen. He’s probably too smart for that now.” Declan rose from his desk and gestured toward the coffee machine. “You want a cup? Seems like you need it.”

  “That and a cigarette. I’ll take the coffee for now. Thank you.”

  Declan gave a weak smile as he left. When he returned, he had two black coffees, plus Jack at his side. Jack’s jacket was wrinkled as if he’d slept in his office. Only the small patch of cat hair on his thigh signaled that he’d gone home.

  “Afternoon. I see you’ve received the medical reports, and Declan here was catching me up on the boat licenses. We know for sure now that Hector was the one operating it.”

  “A lot of good it’ll do us now. I think we’re going to get the case pulled, and so be it.” Declan tossed the file aside and picked up some of the paper messages the other detectives had left on his desk. “There’s a couple domestics that I think would warrant some investigation. What do you say, boss?”

  “Not so fast,” Jack said. “I know this may simply be me trying to keep this case until the last gasp, because it’s my first, and maybe that’s all it is. But I think we can keep investigating this. I think we have an obligation to.”

  “Why? It’s vamp and vamp. We can let it go, right?” Declan asked.

  “Yes, but from what I can tell, Patrick was a human right up until the point he was killed. Sure, he manifested some symptoms of being a vamp, but he hadn’t fed. Under the law, depending on what kind of Assistant Crown Attorney we get to represent the case, we can argue he was human or human-passing. And a vamp targeting humans is a big concern.”

  “Still think our guy’s too smart for that,” Declan said, mumbling slightly. “We find him and he could just tell us that Patrick knew he was sick.”

  “So we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, Patrick Mortimer was a human, through and through. Okay?”

  Chaz nodded, though he knew the likelihood of Patrick knowing he was sick was quite high. He would have been delirious from sun-sickness and blood cravings, but maybe he just thought it was the flu. Maybe he hadn’t cut his mouth on his teeth. Hope bloomed inside of Chaz, especially now that Jack was insistent that he was yet another victim.

  “Okay. Fine. But what the hell do we do next?” Declan asked.

  “Follow the leads so far. We know that Hector was shipping something for a cartel. Maybe the Bloody Hearts or maybe someone else. And we know that Patrick was soliciting—as a human—in a magazine. It’s likely he was pulled into this sex-trafficking ring, along with Hector, and someone there killed them both while leaving saint memorabilia to claim their crime. Now, we may never get this guy on their murder, but we can get him on charges for the cartel. I’m sure of it.” Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out the notebook he kept while on cases. “I’ve been having extensive meetings with Jerry Chan and Sylvia Rong from the gang unit.”

  “Sylvia Rong as in Jinny Rong?”

  “Yeah. Her cousin. Anyway, they’ve agreed to let us keep this case as long as we report in what we find and confer with them before making any major busts. We’ll handle the murders and they’ll handle the financial records and shipments. Sound fair?”

  Declan shrugged, but he seemed far more amenable now than he had been the last ten minutes. “Great. So what do we have on the magazine? Chip?”

  “Um. Uh.” Chaz scrolled through his files, pushing past anything to do with the fly-fishing magazine and Reggie. “Well, the magazine’s called Desire on Fire. Published and produced in downtown Winnipeg, but we also know there are other offices in downtown Toronto and Alberta. The warrant came through for their billing information, so I was going to go through that to see what I could find.”

  “Hmm. That may take too long,” Jack said. “What about when you were in Winnipeg? You found a brothel located close to the magazine, right?”

  “It was in an old storefront and the apartments above it,” Chaz confirmed. “We used cell towers and an immigrant center to find the location.”

  “Good. Put those same search keywords in a computer and see what you find.”

  “But the magazine had nothing in it,”
Declan said. “The local PD checked it out and there was nothing special or important. The forensic accountant has filed her report and even she didn’t find any tenuous connections to any gangs or offshore accounts.” He gestured to another report on his desk. “Winnipeg seems like a lucky shot, you know? Not exactly a pattern to replicate here.”

  “We could also find a vampire den,” Chaz added after Jack skimmed through the file folder. “That was the third factor we used when we were in Winnipeg—there was a vampire den with a lot of suspicious deaths. I know our records of those events are spotty, but we always know the location. We find that, and close by, I know there will be a brothel. Not a lucky bet but something real.”

  Declan’s eyes flashed with something Chaz couldn’t recognize. Desire? Maybe he didn’t want to follow through with the magazine because of the sex ads, and now investigating so close to something so dangerous made him uneasy—especially after their conversation. Chaz turned away from Declan and toward Jack, hoping he didn’t give his own alliances away in the process. “What do you think?”

  “Seems like we have nothing to lose. So try it.” Jack grabbed a chair from the other desks. He sat, chatting with Declan in hushed tones as Chaz searched through the limited information there was online about vampire dens in Toronto. When three suspicious deaths came up, all around the same area where he’d first met Vanessa, his old girlfriend, Chaz knew the exact location to focus on. He marked the location on a map, along with another immigrant center and the magazine’s headquarters on Dundas Street. Another perfect triangle arranged itself.

  “Guys,” he said, turning the computer around. “There we go.”

  “Bermuda triangle,” Jack said. “Good work, Chip. Let’s go on a field trip.”