Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter Collection 6-10

by Laurell Hamilton

  “I could be part dark Italian,” I said.

  A small smile that time. “We don’t have a lot of dark Italians in New Mexico.”

  “I haven’t been here long enough to notice one way or another.”

  “Your first time to this part of the country?”

  I nodded.

  “What do you think so far?”

  “I’ve seen a hospital and part of this house. I think it’s too early to form an opinion.”

  “If we get a breather while you’re here, I’d love to show you some of the sights.”

  I blinked at him. Maybe the boyish charm wasn’t just a cop technique. Maybe he was, gasp, flirting.

  Before I could think of an answer, Edward came up behind us in his best good ol’ boy charm. “Detective Ramirez, good to see you again.”

  They shook hands, and Ramirez wasted a smile on Edward that looked just as genuine as Edward’s. Since I knew Edward was play-acting, it was sort of unnerving how similar the two expressions were.

  “Good to see you, too, Ted.” He turned back to me. “Please, continue looking around. Ted’s told me a lot about you, and I hope for all our sakes that you’re as good as he says you are.”

  I glanced at Edward. He just smiled at me. I frowned. “Well, I’ll try not to disappoint anybody.” I walked back out into the living room trailed by Detective Ramirez. He gave me more room to maneuver than Norton had, but he watched me. Maybe he did want a date, but he wasn’t watching me like a potential date. He was watching me like a cop to see what I did, how I reacted. It made me think better of him that he was professional.

  Edward had lowered his sunglasses enough to give me a look as I passed by him. He was smiling, almost grinning at me. The look said it all. He was amused at Ramirez’ flirting. I flipped him off, covering the gesture with my other hand so only he would see it.

  It made him laugh, and the sound seemed at home here in this bright place. It was a place meant for laughter. The silence filled in behind his laughter like water closing over a stone, until the sound vanished into a profound quiet that was more than quiet.

  I stood in the middle of the bright living room, and it was as if it were a display home waiting for the real estate agent to come through with a tour of potential home owners. The house was so new, it felt like a freshly unwrapped present. But there were things that no real estate agent would have allowed. A newspaper was spilled over the pale wood coffee table with the business section folded into fourths. The business section had New York Times written across the top of it, but some of the other pieces said Los Angeles Tribune. A business person recently moved from Los Angeles, maybe.

  There was a large colored photo pushed to one corner of the coffee table. It showed an older couple, fiftyish, with a teenage boy. They were all smiling and touching each other in that posed casual way photos often use. They looked happy and relaxed together, though you can never really tell with posed photos. So easy to fool the camera.

  I looked around the room and found smaller photos scattered throughout on numerous white shelves that took up almost all available wall space. The photos sat among souvenirs, mostly with an American Indian theme. The smaller more candid shots were just as relaxed, just as smiling. A happy, prosperous family. The boy and man, tanned and grinning on a boat with the sea in the background and a huge fish between them. The woman and three small girls covered in cookie dough and matching Christmas aprons. There were at least three photos of smiling adult couples with one or two children apiece. The little girls from the Christmas photo; grandchildren, maybe.

  I stared at the couple and that tall, tanned teenager, and hoped they were dead because the thought of any of them up in that hospital room turned into so much pain and meat was . . . not a comfy thought. I didn’t speculate. They were dead, and that was comforting.

  I turned my attention from the photos to the Indian artifacts lining the shelves. Some of it was touristy stuff: reproductions of painted pots in muted shades, too new to be real; Kachina dolls that would have looked just as at home in a child’s room; rattlesnake heads stretched in impotent strikes, dead before their murderer opened their mouths to appear fearsome.

  But in among the tourist chic were other things. A pot that was displayed behind glass with pieces missing and the paint faded to a dull gray and eggshell color. A spear or javelin on the wall above the fireplace. The spear was behind glass and had remnants of feathers and thongs, beads trailing from it. The head of the spear looked like stone. There was a tiny necklace of beads and shells under glass with the worn edges of the hide thong that bound them together showing. Someone had known what they were collecting because every piece that looked real was behind glass, cared for. The tourist stuff had been left out to fend for itself.

  I spoke without turning around, staring at the necklace. “I’m no expert on Indian artifacts but some of this looks like museum quality.”

  “According to the experts it is,” Ramirez said.

  I looked at him. His face had gone back to neutral, and he looked older. “Is it all legal?”

  That earned me another small smile. “You mean is it stolen?”

  I nodded.

  “The stuff we’ve been able to trace was all purchased from private individuals.”

  “There’s more?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Show me,” I said.

  He turned and started walking down a long central hallway. It was my turn to play follow the leader though I gave him more room than either he or Norton had given me. I couldn’t help noticing how nicely his dress slacks fit. I shook my head. Was it the flirting, or was I just tired of the two men in my life? Something less complicated would have been nice, but part of me knew that the time for other choices was long past. So I admired his backside as we walked up the hall and knew it meant nothing. I had enough problems without dating the local cops. I was a civilian surrounded by police, and a woman, too. The only thing that would earn me less respect in their eyes was to date one of them. I would lose what little clout I had and become a girlfriend. Anita Blake, vampire executioner and preternatural expert, had some ground to stand on. Detective Ramirez’ girlfriend would not.

  Edward trailed behind us, but far enough back that we were at the far end of the hallway when he was barely in the corridor. Was he giving us privacy? Did he think it was a good idea to flirt with the detective, or was any human better than a monster, no matter how nice the monster was? If Edward had any prejudice, it was against the monsters.

  Ramirez stood at the end of the hallway. He was still smiling as if he were giving me a tour of some other house for some other purpose. His face didn’t match what we were about to do. He motioned to the doors to either side of him. “Artifacts to your left, gory stuff to the right.”

  “Gory stuff?” I made it a question.

  He nodded, still pleasant, and I moved closer to him. I stared into those dark brown eyes and realized that the smile was his blank-cop face. It was cheerful, but his eyes were just as unreadable as any cop’s I’d ever seen. Smiling blankness, but still blankness. It was unique and somehow disquieting.” Gory stuff,” I said.

  The smile stayed, but the eyes were a little less sure. “You don’t have to play the tough girl with me, Anita.”

  “She’s not playing,” Edward said. He’d finally joined us.

  Ramirez’ eyes flicked to him then back to study my face. “High compliment coming from you, Forrester.”

  If he only knew, I thought. “Look, Detective, I just came from the hospital. Whatever is behind the door can’t be worse than that.”

  “How can you be so sure?” he asked.

  I smiled. “Because even with the air conditioner on, the smell would be worse.”

  The smile flashed bright and I think real for a moment. “Very practical,” he said, voice almost laughing. “I should have known you’d be practical.”

  I frowned at him. “Why?”

  He motioned at his own face. “No make-u
p,” he said.

  “Maybe I just don’t give a damn.”

  He nodded. “That too.” He started to reach for the door, and I beat him to it. He raised eyebrows at me, but just stepped back and let me open the door. Which also meant I got to walk in first, but hey, only fair. Edward and Ramirez had both already seen the show. My ticket was fresh and hadn’t been punched yet.

  11

  I EXPECTED TO FIND a lot of things in the bedroom: blood stains, signs of a struggle, maybe even a clue. What I did not expect to find was a soul. But the moment I entered that pale white and green bedroom I knew it was there, hovering near the ceiling, waiting. It wasn’t the first soul I’d sensed. Funerals were always fun. Souls often hung around the bodies as if unsure what to do, but by three days’ time the souls were usually gone to wherever souls were supposed to go.

  I stared up at this soul and saw nothing. If a soul has a physical shape, you couldn’t prove it by me, but I knew it was there. I could have sketched the outline of it in the air with my hand, knew about how much space it was taking up as it floated near the ceiling. But it was energy, spirit, and though it took up space, I wasn’t entirely sure it took up the same kind of space as I did, as the bed did, as anything else did.

  My voice came out hushed, as if I were to speak too loudly, I’d scare it away. “How long have they been dead?”

  “They aren’t dead,” Ramirez said.

  I blinked and turned to him. “What do you mean they’re not dead?”

  “You saw the Bromwells in the hospital. They’re both still alive.”

  I looked into his serious face. The smile had vanished. I turned back to gaze at that slow hovering presence. “Someone died here,” I said.

  “No one was cut up here,” Ramirez said. “According to the Santa Fe PD that’s the method of killing that this guy is using. Look at the carpet. There’s not enough blood for anyone to have been cut up.”

  I looked down at the pale green carpet, and he was right. There was blood like black juice soaked into the carpet, but it wasn’t much blood, just spots, dabs. The blood was from the skinning of two adults, but if someone had been torn apart limb from limb there would have been more blood, a lot more. There was still the faint rank smell where someone’s bowels had let go either under torture or death. It was pretty common. Death is the last intimate thing we ever do.

  I shook my head and debated on what to say. If I’d been at home with Dolph and Zerbrowski and the rest of the St. Louis police that I knew well, I’d have just said I saw a soul. But I didn’t know Ramirez, and most cops spook around anyone that can do mystical stuff. To tell or not to tell, that was the question, when noises from the front room brought us all around to stare behind us at the still open door.

  Men’s voices, hurried footsteps, coming closer. My hand was on my gun when I heard a voice yell, “Ramirez, where the hell are you?”

  It was Lieutenant Marks. I eased away from my gun and knew I wasn’t telling the police that there was a soul hanging in the air behind me. Marks was scared enough of me without that.

  He stepped into the doorway with a small battalion of uniforms at his back, almost as if he expected trouble. His eyes were both harsh and pleased when he looked at me. “Get the fuck off my evidence, Blake. You’re outta here.”

  Edward stepped forward, smiling, trying to play peacemaker. “Now, Lieutenant, who would give such an order?”

  “My chief.” He turned to the cops behind him. “Escort her off the property.”

  I held up my hands and started moving towards the door before the uniforms could move in. “I’ll go, no problem. No need to get rough.” I was at the door almost abreast with Marks.

  He hissed close to my face, “This isn’t rough, Blake. You come near me again and I’ll show you rough.”

  I stopped in the doorway, meeting his gaze. His eyes had turned a swimming aqua blue, dark with his anger. The doorway wasn’t that big, and standing in it we were almost touching. “I haven’t done anything wrong, Marks.”

  He spoke low, but it carried. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.”

  I thought of a lot of things to say, and do, most of which would have gotten me dragged out by a bunch of uniforms. I didn’t want to be dragged out, but I wanted to make Marks suffer. Choices, choices.

  I rose on tiptoe and planted a big kiss on his mouth. He stumbled back, pushing away from me so hard that he fell into the bedroom and left me pushed into the hallway beyond. Masculine laughter filled the hallway. Two bright spots of color flamed on Marks’ cheeks as he lay panting on the carpet.

  “You’re lying in your evidence, Marks,” I said.

  “Get her out of here, now.”

  I blew Marks a kiss, and left through a grinning parade of policeman. One of the uniforms offered to let me kiss him any time. I told him he couldn’t handle it and left through the front door to laughter, catcalls, and masculine humor mostly at Marks’ expense. He didn’t seem to be a popular guy. Go figure.

  Edward stayed inside for a few moments, probably trying to soothe things over like a good Ted would do. But in the end he came out of the house, shaking hands with the cops, smiling, and nodding. The smile vanished as soon as he turned so that I was his only audience.

  He unlocked the car and we got in. When we were safe inside of its mud-stained windows, he said, “Marks has gotten you kicked off the investigation. I don’t know how he did it, but he did it.”

  “Maybe he and the chief go to the same church,” I said. I had snuggled down into the seat, as far as the seatbelt would allow. Edward looked at me as he started the engine. “You don’t seem upset.”

  I shrugged. “Marks isn’t the first right-wing asshole to get up in my face, and he won’t be the last.”

  “Where’s that famous temper of yours?”

  “Maybe I’m growing up,” I said.

  He shook his head. “What did you see in the corner of the room that I didn’t? You were looking at something.”

  “A soul,” I said.

  He actually lowered his sunglasses so I could see his baby blues. “A soul?”

  I nodded. “Which means that someone in that house did die, and within three days.”

  “Why three days?” he asked.

  “Because three days is the limit for most souls to hang around. After that they go to heaven or hell or wherever. After three days you may get ghosts, but you won’t get souls.”

  “But the Bromwells are alive. You saw them yourself.”

  “What about their son?” I asked.

  “He’s missing,” Edward said.

  “Nice of you to mention that.” I wanted to be angry at him for the game playing, but I just couldn’t find the energy. No matter how blasé I was about Marks, it did bother me. I was Christian, but I’d lost count of the number of fellow Christians who’d called me witch or worse. It didn’t make me angry anymore, just tired.

  “If the parents are alive, then the boy probably isn’t,” I said.

  Edward pulled out onto the road, easing his way among the plethora of marked and unmarked police cars Marks had brought with him. “But all the other murder vics were cut up. We didn’t find any body parts in the house. If the boy is dead, then it’s a change in the pattern. We haven’t figured out the old pattern yet.”

  “A change in pattern may give the police the break they need,” I said.

  “You believe that?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “What do you believe?”

  “I believe that the Bromwells’ son is dead, and whatever skinned and mutilated his parents took his body, but didn’t cut it up. However the son was killed, it wasn’t by being torn apart or there would have been more blood. He was killed in a way that didn’t add blood to the room.”

  “But you’re sure he’s dead?”

  “There’s a soul floating around the house, Edward. Someone’s dead, and if there are only three people living in a house, and two of them are accounted for . . . You d
o the math.” I was staring out the car window but wasn’t seeing anything. I was seeing that young tanned face smiling in the pictures.

  “Deductive reasoning,” Edward said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, me and Sherlock Holmes. By the way, now that I’m persona non grata, where are you taking me?”

  “To a restaurant. You said you hadn’t had lunch.”

  I nodded. “Fine.” Then after a moment, I asked, “What was his name?”

  “Who?”

  “The Bromwells’ son, what was his first name?”

  “Thad, Thaddeus Reginald Bromwell.”

  “Thad,” I said softly to myself. Had he been forced to watch while his parents were skinned alive, mutilated? Or had they watched him die before they bled? “Where’s your body, Thad? And why did they want it?” There was no answer. I hadn’t expected one. Souls weren’t like ghosts. To my knowledge there was no way to communicate with them directly. But I would have answers and soon. It had to be soon. “Edward, I need to see the pictures from the other crime scenes. I need to see everything the Santa Fe PD have. You said only this last case was in Albuquerque, so screw them. I’ll start from the other end.”

  Edward smiled. “I’ve got copies at my house.”

  “Your house?” I sat up straighter and stared at him. “Since when do the police share files with bounty hunters?”

  “I told you the Santa Fe police like Ted.”

  “You said the Albuquerque police liked you, too,” I said.

  “They do like me. It’s you they don’t like.” He had a point. I could still see the hatred in Marks’ eyes when he hissed at me, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” Sweet Jesus. That was actually the first time I’d ever had that particular verse quoted at me. Though I suppose someone would have gotten around to it sooner or later, being who I am and what I do. I just didn’t expect it from a police lieutenant during a murder investigation. It lacked a certain professionalism.

  “Marks won’t be able to solve this case,” I said.

  “Without you, you mean?”