Black Market Blood

by Francis Gideon

“Because even if I’m not here as a sex worker, I can tell you things later as a sex worker. Make sense? It’ll be later, after we’re done, so we don’t blow cover, but I want to see as much as I can. And besides, I want to see what the asshole did, so maybe I can protect myself.”

  “Yes, of course. You helped so much with the Cupids and arrows. So of course.”

  “Yeah,” Sully said slowly. “I never said anything about arrows, though. What do you mean?”

  “Oh. Well. You’ll see soon enough when we got into this house. We found arrows painted on everything when we were here a few days ago. I figured it had something to do with marking Cupids—like stating here are the younger ones—but you can give me your opinion later.”

  Chip cut the engine and gathered some of his files from the backseat. Sully followed close behind as they left the car, though he had a sick feeling brewing in his stomach about what this was really about.

  Chip rattled off some of the location details, including the monster hospital across the street that was apparently still clear. They were heading toward what the police had deemed the brothel, though no actual beds were found. He pointed to the officers hanging around on the sidelines—Jinny Rong and Alan Ramirez.

  “Let me introduce you to my partner and boss,” Chip said as he steered them over to his coworkers. “This is Jack Tanner, police staff inspector.”

  Jack Tanner was a lot smaller than Sully thought he’d be. His narrow dark eyes and pale skin were inviting, and when he shook Sully’s hand without a second glance, Sully felt instantly welcomed into this small task force.

  “Michael Sullivan is our translator,” Chip explained. “Mostly literature, but he’s been around enough conversations that he can help us with witnesses if there are any who need his assistance.”

  “So glad to hear. Nice to meet you and have you working with us, Mr. Sullivan. Wish it was under better circumstance. Where did you study?”

  “Thanks. Call me Sully,” he said. After Jack slipped him a nondisclosure agreement for the crime scene, Sully reiterated his credentials from Waterloo. The more he listed, his literature classes and ones in world religions, along with his ranking on the Dean’s List, the better he felt. His degree was real and he’d done well. So what if John paid for it and it was in exchange for Sully going home with him every night? And that John had handpicked his courses so Sully could be worldly and start conversations at parties? It didn’t diminish his degree. Sully blinked away that portion of his life. He didn’t need to add any of that for his credibility, not even the hushed conversations with John’s parents in Slovakia, so Sully forgot. For a while he became Sully, a Czech foreign-language specialist. Žádná minulost, žádná budoucnost. Jen přítomnost. No past, no future. Only present.

  With Chip by his side, the apparently normal detective with no hint of vampire blood, the whole thing felt like a game. But it was a game he could win.

  “The women who found the body?” Chip asked when introductions were over. “How are they doing?”

  “Rattled but fine. One isn’t talking, but we think that’s because she doesn’t speak that much English. We’ve been combing through 911 tapes as well and are concerned that someone may have called in earlier, but they had no language specialist available at the time and the call was disconnected before they could find one or trace the line beyond cell towers. You think you can listen to some tapes for us?”

  Sully nodded, though it took him a moment to realize he was being addressed. “Sure, sure.”

  “Good. Fair warning, there’s a lot of yelling. Looking at our timeline of the bodies, we’re actually concerned the murder was in progress.”

  Sully tried to smile as he nodded again. “I’ll do my best.”

  “Great. We’ll set you up with those in a while. Right now, come and check out these photos from earlier. Can you recognize anything on the walls or bookshelves?”

  “Sure, sure,” Sully said, feeling like a broken record.

  On Jack’s signal, Chip slipped out a couple photos from the file he held. Sully traced his fingers around the edge, only focusing on the arrows. Familiar arrows, like the kind he had followed and that sometimes marked the blood that came into Artie’s. He stifled any kind of recognition. The books on the shelves were all in different languages, but none of the titles were of note. Just the garden-variety mystery novel and stuff to buy at airports, but translated for a new crowd. Not all of them were in Slovak or Czech either; most were in French. When he said this to Jack, he seemed disappointed.

  “What about the magazines?” another ragged-looking detective asked. He was introduced as Declan Gallagher by Chip, but the man didn’t extend his hand. He gestured toward a stack of magazines on a coffee table in the corner of the photo. “You getting anything off these?”

  “They’re in English,” Chip said, speaking in a harsher voice Sully never heard before. “No point in Sully looking.”

  “Right, of course.” Declan shrugged.

  Sully bit his lip, thankful he could keep his information to himself. Those were sex magazines for sure. He recognized the saccharine neon colors, and sharp paper that always seemed to cut him when he held the edges too close to his skin. He could tell from the logos on the side of the page, though, that these were older magazines. Ones that weren’t being used for shopping but to establish a manifest list of people to save. At least, he hoped so.

  “Well, in that case let’s head inside,” Jack said. “Chip’s braced you? We have two bodies here.”

  Sully nodded and handed back the crime scene photos. Jack spoke a few words as they all donned some protective gear on their shoes and coats, and then the officers guarding the door of the house allowed them inside. Declan led the way, Chip followed behind, and Sully was sandwiched in the middle as Jack closed the door.

  The bad floral wallpaper in the kitchen, the creaky hardwood floors, and the 1970s moldings made Sully shiver. God, he hated places like this. He’d never been to this brothel, but all the penny motels like this were run the same. Sex traffickers had been here; there was no doubt in his mind. When he glanced at the books still lining the shelves in the kitchen, he knew it was a creature brothel. No one had that many cookbooks dedicated to garlic and healing teas unless they were looking at subduing a bunch of monsters without raising the suspicions of a drug cartel. They learned early on that was the best way to do things.

  The furniture—with claw marks too high to be a cat and stains too dark to be semen but too light to be blood—also indicated monster life and sex trafficking.

  He saw nothing in Czech, no sign of Slovak, until they came to the woman who was crying hysterically. Her hair was dark, her skin tanned, and she wore a bright blue dress as if she was going to a dance. The claw marks on her wrist made him think she was a werewolf, or had gone to a party with one. She held her bag in her hands and braced herself against one of the porch doors as if she’d just come back from getting air outside.

  “Krvelačný ďábel,” she cried out between sobs.

  Sully furrowed his brows. Her words were about the devil. He tried to forget the archaic expressions from the opera, thinking he blurred the words with what he wanted to hear. He strained again, turning away from her mouth so he could focus on the sound of her voice. But again he heard her talk about the devil.

  “Oči modré jako led. Přišel zabít. Byl pro zabíjení narozen,” she said.

  Blood sucking devil. Blue eyes like ice. He came in to kill. Born to kill, Sully translated.

  “Jesus.” Sully had to turn away. He noticed Jack and Chip staring at him expectantly. “Can we give her time to calm down? I think she’s praying rather than talking to that officer.”

  Jack eyed the woman again and nodded. “You’re right. She’s been murmuring and pacing more than anything. We’ll give her a second and I’ll show you the bodies. Now, I know that this can be hard. If you want, we can take photos of what we want you to see, and then you can look at it later. It may be better to do it
that way, so you can compare photo to photo to see if anything has changed in terms of the languages written down anywhere.”

  “No, I don’t mind.”

  “Okay. I appreciate the help.” Jack lifted up the yellow police tape over the living-room-area doorway and let them through.

  The first body was in the center of the floor, spread-eagle, and male. He was dressed in tight boxers and a T-shirt only, clearly in the middle of getting dressed or undressed before he was killed. Sully was struck by how beautiful he was. He was young, maybe only in his early twenties. His hair was blond-brown, almost like hay. His skin was smooth, no marks, tattoos, or wrinkles on him—save for the puncture wounds on the neck. A deep bruise had formed around the marks and spread underneath his T-shirt.

  “Why is he bruised here and here?” Sully asked, referring to the body as he did.

  “Pressure points,” Chip said. “Where the most blood goes. How long has he been dead?”

  “We don’t know yet. Katja—our medical examiner—hasn’t shown up, but we’re guessing a couple hours.”

  “Why isn’t he shriveled up, then?” Chip asked.

  Sully had no idea what they were talking about—until he saw the second body. A couch sat next to the first body, and half-hidden behind it, lay the second, shriveled and mummified. Sully could barely make out any physical features or gender. Something red seemed to be tied around the body’s head, but that could be anything. A hat, a scarf, a hijab, a turban. Or the killer trying to disguise who was who. It made no sense that the boy was half-naked while the shriveled up body seemed to be swimming in its clothing, but making that call wasn’t Sully’s job.

  “Um. Do you need me to read anything?”

  “Right, of course,” Jack said. “Take a look at the boy again. Does the necklace mean anything to you?”

  Sully approached carefully. Around the bruising on the victim’s neck, mixed with blood, was a gold chain. The necklace opened up to a painting of a saint inside. Sully knew the saint all too well. “There’s no Czech here. Just a picture of a saint.”

  “Jude?”

  “No idea. Looks more like… Sebastian?”

  “Ah. Well,” Jack said, “is it significant in Czech culture?”

  “Well, chances are you’re dealing with a Catholic population. The saints could mark a safer passage when traveling.”

  “What does Sebastian mean?” Chip asked.

  Sully shrugged. When Declan answered, he was relieved. “Soldiers, the plague stricken, and Holy Christian death. So, I guess this safe passage wasn’t so safe. We’re still thinking traffickers, right? Religious traffickers?”

  “Who knows?” Jack said, sighing. “Could our vamp here be this guy’s killer—and the pimp we’re looking for? Is our murder mystery over now?”

  “Not likely,” Chip said, “since someone killed the vamp. Hector was a vamp too, and still sucked dry.”

  “So we’re back to our self-hating vamp again?” Declan said with a groan. “Great. Narrows that down since most vamps are scum anyway. Easy to hate.”

  Sully swallowed. His gaze flitted over to Chip to see how he was handling everything. Tension built around the lines of his face, but no one seemed to notice. The entire room was abuzz with activity, and when a woman with blonde hair and a narrow nose came in with a box full of tools, the chaos of the room became even louder. Someone introduced Sully to the medical examiner named Katja, but he didn’t remember the handshake. Words faded around him. Sully went to step aside from the body and noticed the blood on the ground. God, there was so much. Almost as if it would leak through the floorboards. Was it leaking through the floorboards? He wanted to bend down and shove the blood away, but it only hit his nostrils like acrid air.

  “Sully,” Jack said. “Sorry to grab you again, but are you up for looking at some medical forms in Czech while Katja reviews the body? We should give her some room.”

  “What am I looking at? Sorry, I feel light-headed.”

  Chip was suddenly by his side, grabbing Sully’s arm. “Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?”

  “No. But if someone has water, I think I may….” Sully’s stomach lurched. He was surprised when he felt the food he’d eaten with Chip come up. He mumbled apologies, then rushed from the room and ran out on the lawn to throw up in the bushes. The second sex worker from the ambulance noticed him, walked over, and handed him a blanket.

  “Jehňátko,” she said under her breath.

  “Děkujete,” he replied.

  “You speak?” she asked in English.

  “Yes,” he said in English, then gathered his wits to continue the conversation in Czech. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve been better. The kid, though. He was so young.”

  “How young?”

  “Twenty-four, maybe twenty-five.”

  “Was he killed by a vamp?”

  “Yes, the devil.”

  “The devil?” Sully repeated to be sure. He’d been about to ask if the other vamp on the floor had done the killing like everyone inside thought, but the invocation of the devil made his blood run cold. “How do you know him? This devil is a man, yes?”

  “They’re always men. He comes by all the time. Mean. He must have been the one to do this.”

  “What makes him mean? Can you describe him for me?” Sully’s stomach twisted into knots, and he worried he’d throw up again if she described someone who looked like Reggie. When she didn’t, Sully cross-checked her description with every other bad lay he’d had in ten years. Nothing registered. Whoever the devil was, Sully never had him.

  “Are you sure it was him? And definitely not the vamp in the room?”

  “No, no! The vamp is Fatima,” the woman said, her cries mournful again. “Oh, poor Fatima. Little lamb.”

  “That was Fatima?” Sully said, not hiding the surprise in his voice. The red scarf. The clothing. It couldn’t be her, but it made too much sense.

  “You knew her?”

  “Yes. A little bit. She….” Sully glanced around and realized he could have this conversation with her. In Czech at least. He struggled to articulate it the best way possible. “Fatima was at a house I was at for a while.”

  “Oh. You….”

  “Yes.”

  “But not anymore,” she said. “Good for you to get out.”

  Sully paused, wondering if he had screwed up his verb tenses and she thought his working days were in the past because of it. He wanted her to know he was still there, still doing it, and it didn’t have to end this way. His tongue failed him, though, and the woman was chatting again. She told him more stories about the devil, but the more she talked, the more he realized the devil was a nickname for every single bad john: a regular guy who became something worse as time went on. He thanked her again, handing back the blanket. When he reached the porch, Jack and Chip were waiting for him.

  “Here,” Chip said, extending a hand with a wrapper in it. “Katja always has spearmint gum for times like this.”

  “Thank you,” Sully said, nearly answering in Czech. He folded the gum in half before putting it in his mouth. Instantly, he felt better.

  “You find out anything from the woman?”

  “Not really,” Sully said. “Everyone keeps saying the devil did it. A guy with really blue eyes.”

  “And?”

  “And I think something’s missing here,” Sully said. “Can you tell me anything more about the guy in there? He’s not a vamp.”

  “No. We’re thinking human,” Jack said, “but Katja’s not done yet.”

  “Can I talk to her? Maybe go back inside?”

  Jack shot a glance to Chip, whose face remained stoic. “You sure?”

  Sully wanted to yell that he was a big boy and could handle it, but the flashback of his sickness made him pause. Maybe it would be better to hear the report later from afar. When Jack finally waved him through, Sully let out a breath. The tension in his shoulders disappeared.

  “Don’t feel bad,” Ja
ck added. “Everyone throws up their first time.”

  “I don’t feel bad.”

  “Good.”

  Declan wasn’t in the living room area anymore, leaving only Katja. She furrowed her brow as she peeled back the clothing on the vamp body. A deep, dark bruise over the already dark skin of the vamp revealed more puncture marks. She relayed information to Chip about the body in a casual, almost friendly manner while Sully just stared. Not a random vamp but Fatima. This was Fatima, the liaison, which meant these sex workers weren’t being trafficked. They were so close to being free. The arrows and the saints could have been coincidence. Maybe. But Fatima, combined with the older magazines, left no doubt. The house may have been a brothel at one point, but it had been repurposed for good now.

  But Sully couldn’t say a thing. He glanced at Chip, who still smiled as he caught up with Katja. They weren’t even talking about the crime anymore; he was ribbing her for taking so much time off.

  What had Chip said about Fatima? She saved his life. He would be crushed to hear of her death. Sully couldn’t explain how he knew her, so he was forced to compartmentalize tonight yet again.

  Another problem for another day.

  “So, Katja,” Jack said. “What can you tell us about this victim?”

  “Your vamp is not the doer. For either crime. They were all killed by the same vamp, most likely, but I’ll know more once I get a full autopsy.”

  “No IDs?”

  “Nope. But the woman had a card in her pocket. Mean anything?” Katja held up a card of Saint Sebastian before she slid it into an evidence bag.

  “Just like the necklace,” Jack said. He turned to Sully and gestured for him to take the card. “Any foreign language on it that you can see?”

  Sully grasped the card through the evidence bag. He saw directions printed in the background but shrugged. “A little blurry. Can’t tell.”

  “But the vamp is a woman?” Chip repeated.

  “Yeah, she is.”

  “This breaks our pattern,” Jack said. “And the boy is…?”

  “Undetermined,” Katja said. “I don’t want to say human, but nothing else is coming to my mind based on his blood. There’s too much blood here to be from a human, but it could have been mixed with something else.”