by J. R. Rain
“It’s a rare disease that I have under control. Mostly, I have to stay out of the sun and away from McDonald’s heating lamps.”
“I see some of that spunkiness coming through.”
“You caught me.”
“Will your condition affect your performance?”
“No, ma’am, although I tend to work nights, as we’ve already discussed over the phone.”
“Working nights is fine with us. We don’t need any more distractions during the day. And besides, the theft occurred at night, too. Maybe there’s something to that.”
“Maybe,” I said. Sheesh, everyone’s a detective. “Is there a special crew that works the night shift?”
“Security crew, yes. I will introduce you to some of them shortly.” Ms. Dickens paused and held my gaze. “I need to underline the importance of this investigation, Ms. Moon. We are a respectable, although small, cultural museum. We’ve had everything from rare Egyptian treasures to paintings by Van Gogh. A theft like this could shatter our international image and keep the popular exhibits away. Ms. Moon, the Wharton Museum is slowly making a name for itself as a world class cultural museum. We need all the help we can get, and we will pay big if you can recover the crystal egg.”
We discussed exactly how big, and it was all I could do to keep my mouth from dropping open. We next discussed a retainer fee, and she paid it without blinking, writing me a company check. The retainer fee would pay my mortgage for the next three months, and maybe a car payment or two.
Things were looking up.
She gave me a quick tour and then we shook hands and I left the way I had come, passing more live exhibits of mankind in his natural working habitat.
Or perhaps they were just offices and cubicles.
Chapter Sixteen
I called Mary Lou and got the rundown.
Anthony was awake and seemed to be holding steady. No real progress, but no relapse either. Still, my gut churned. When I thought about my son, I saw something dark around him. The brightness and vitality that surrounded him was gone.
I desperately feared what that darkness could mean.
To get my thoughts off my son, I headed over to Zov’s bistro in Costa Mesa, where I ordered a rare steak and a glass of white wine. The upscale Mediterranean restaurant was the epitome of hip, and I even noticed Orange County’s bestselling writer sitting just a few tables down. He looked serious. Maybe he was plotting his next thriller. I wondered if he could sense that a real live vampire was sitting just a few tables away.
While I waited, I plunged into Maddie’s police file, reading every note and witness statement.
I knew I should be with my son, and I would be soon, but for now there was a little girl missing, and she had made it very personal by calling me.
By calling me, even accidentally, she had assured herself of one thing: a private investigating psychic vampire mommy who was going to find her.
No matter what.
My food arrived quickly. The nice thing about ordering steaks rare is that they don’t take long to cook. And as I read from the folder, I discreetly used a spoon to slurp the blood that had pooled around the meat. I also cut the meat up without actually eating it. I scattered the chunks around my plate, hiding some under my salad. I felt like a kid hiding her food.
The blood was wonderful and satisfied some of my craving, although I would need more later. And when I had drained the meat dry, I moved on to the glass of white wine. When the wine was done, I was done reading the police report, too.
Granted, there wasn’t much to go on, but I had a few leads. I paid my bill, glanced a final time at the writer—who was now openly staring at me—and left Zov’s Bistro.
I had a girl to find.
Chapter Seventeen
I was driving down the 57 Freeway when my cell rang. I glanced down at it. Kingsley Fulcrum, a one-time client of mine who had turned into something more than a client.
A few weeks ago we had been intimate, an experience that had rocked my world, and shortly after that I was reminded of what a scumbag he could be. Kingsley was a defense attorney. A very high profile and rich defense attorney. He got paid the big bucks to get people out of jail. As far as I could tell, the man had no moral compass. Killer or not, if the price was right, he would do his damnedest to get you to walk.
Did I still care for the big lug? Yeah, I did. Did the thought of him in bed turn me on more than I cared to admit? Sweet Jesus, it did. Did the fact that he had shown up in my hotel room a week or so ago as a fully morphed werewolf, dripping blood and reeking of death, scare the shit out of me? Hell, yeah.
I clicked on, resisting the urge to sing “Werewolves of London” yet again. When your boy is sick and you’re looking for a kidnapped girl, well, your humor is the first to go.
“What, no ‘Werewolves of London’? No ‘Arooo’? You’re losing your touch, Sam.”
“It’s not a good time, Kingsley.”
“So serious. Okay, have it your way. Where will you be in about an hour?”
“My best guess? In the face of some crackhead punk.”
“A shakedown. Sounds exciting. Tell me about it.”
I did. I also told him about my son.
“Yeah, you’ve had a rough few days. How’s your son now?”
“Sleeping last I heard.”
“But you’re still worried.”
“More than you know.” I paused, gathered my wits, and plunged on. “I see death around him, Kingsley.”
“Death?”
“A blackness. A coldness. A sort of dark halo that surrounds his body. I’m totally freaked out.”
Kingsley was silent for a heartbeat or two. “He’ll be fine, Sam.”
But I heard it in his voice. I heard the doubt.
“You don’t believe that,” I said. Tears suddenly blurred my eyes. I was having a hard time keeping the van in the center of the lane. “And don’t deny it.”
“Sam, I don’t know anything, okay? I’m not psychic. My kind are not traditionally psychic.”
“But my kind is?”
“Often. And you seem to be growing more psychic by the day.”
“What do you know of the black halo? Tell me. Please.”
“I know very little, Sam.”
A nearly overwhelming sense of panic gripped me. “But you know it’s not good.”
“I know nothing, Sam. Look, now is not a good time to talk about this. You’re driving. You’re helping this little girl. Let’s meet for drinks later this week, okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
“Good. And Sam?”
“Yes?”
“I care about you deeply. Your family, too. Everything will be okay. I promise.”
I broke down, crying hard, and clicked off.
Chapter Eighteen
I pulled up to a squalid house in Buena Park, about a mile north of Knott’s Berry Farm. I sat in my minivan for a few minutes and took in the scene. Apartments across the street. A gang of Hispanic males a block away to the west. They were smoking and drinking and listening to music. The music pumped from a four-door sedan whose front end was hydraulically propped up off the ground two or three feet. The car looked ridiculous and cool at the same time. I wasn’t sure which. The gang ignored my van, which was probably a good idea. The last time I had a run-in with a Latino gang someone had died.
And gotten himself drained of blood, too.
The moon was obscured by a gauzy veil of clouds. The street had a mean feel to it. The area itself seemed malevolent, and I suspected this awareness was a result of my increased psychic abilities. I sensed death on this street. I sensed stabbings and robberies and harassment and fear. I sensed drug deals and drugs deals gone bad. I sensed a ramshackle attempt at organized crime. I sensed killers and victims. It was all here, infusing the air and the earth, the trees and the buildings. A calling card of hate for anyone sensitive enough to feel it. And I was sensitive enough. Perhaps too sensitive. The feeling was overwhelming.
Energy crackled crazily through the air, too—and now that I knew what to look for, I saw many vague spirits walking among the living. Murder victims mostly. But some were lost souls, whose lives were taken by drug abuse or physical abuse.
It was into this environment of loss and despair and suffering that I stepped out of my minivan.
A low iron fence surrounded the property. The gate was topped with rusted iron spikes. The spikes were mostly rounded and probably wouldn’t do much damage unless someone fell from a great height. The front gate was not locked and swung open on rusted hinges. As I moved across the front yard, I felt eyes on me from across the street. I had attracted the attention of the neighbors in the apartment building. No doubt watching from one of the windows.
I stepped up onto the cement porch, which was cracked and flaked with peeling paint. I paused a moment, getting a feel for the house. Someone was inside, I knew that much. I could hear a TV on somewhere. The house itself was drenched in so much tragedy that it was a beehive of bad vibes, depression and anything else negative.
More than anything, the house was the last known residence of Lauren Monk and her daughter Maddie. I shook my head. What a place to raise a little girl.
Granted, I doubted there was much “raising” going on here. Existing was more like it.
I knocked on the door loudly. The door was made of metal and seemed better suited in a parking garage stairwell. There were dents in the door, about waist high. Someone had tried to kick it in at some point. Maybe many points. I looked around the metal frame. As far as I could tell, they weren’t successful. The door and frame had held firm.
The TV continued to blare. A distant siren wailed behind me. Down the street someone laughed and others followed suit. I knocked again, and again.
No response.
I stepped back, lifted my foot, and kicked the door in.
Chapter Nineteen
The door swung violently back, slamming hard into the wall behind it, so hard that the doorknob punctured the drywall. It stayed open like that as I stepped in. Unless someone was brandishing a stake or silver-tipped arrows, I wasn’t too concerned about what was waiting for me on the other side. Sure, a bullet to the chest probably would hurt like hell, and no doubt ruin my blouse, but gone are the days where I worried much about my own physical safety.
I found myself standing in a living room. Or a toxic bio-hazard. Take your pick. The long clump of trash to my right was probably a couch. The rectangular clump in front of it was probably a coffee table. Everything from shopping bags to clothing to pizza boxes were everywhere. Including used heroin needles. Everywhere. Hundreds of them.
I stepped over broken glass and empty beer cans and a McDonald’s Happy Meal. I moved through the living room and into a kitchen that hadn’t been used as a kitchen in some time.
Instead, it was being used as a meth lab.
There were bottles and jars with rubber tubing. There were stripped-down lithium batteries piled on tables. Paint thinner and starter fluid containers lined the floors. Empty packets of cold tablets, no doubt containing pseudoephedrine, were piled on the tables and counters. Also on the tables were jars containing clear liquid with red and white bottom layers. Ether and ammonia wafted from them. Propane tanks were everywhere. Okay, the propane tanks made me a little nervous.
There was a strong smell of something else. And it was coming from the next room. I knew that smell. Any cop or agent would know that smell.
I moved through the kitchen and down a short hallway. I had sensed someone else in the house, but what I had not sensed was whether or not that someone was alive or dead.
At the far end of the hallway, in a room to the right, a TV was on and a man wearing boxer shorts was lying face down in a pool of blood. In death, he had made an unholy mess of himself, but that did not stop me from checking him out.
I rolled him over. Blood stained the mattress. Probably all the way through and to the bed springs below. I counted five shots to the chest. I wrinkled my nose, although wrinkling did little against what was wafting up from him.
I did a quick examination. White male in his early fifties. Dead for less than 24-hours, give or take a half a day. Heavy set. No indication of a fight. The body already in full rigor mortis. Face bright crimson where the blood had settled like oil at the bottom of an oil pan.
I eased him back down.
Years ago such a scene might have turned my stomach. I might have picked a quiet spot behind the house to vomit, careful not to disrupt a crime scene. Now, not so much. I had seen many dead bodies in my time, certainly, but there was something else going on. Something that worried me. I should care more about death, about the loss of life. But I didn’t.
Death no longer bothered me. Didn’t phase me. I felt no emotion or concern or anything.
It was just death.
The natural order of things.
I wasn’t always this way, but something had changed inside of me, and I think I knew what that something was.
I was becoming less human...and that scared the shit out of me.
I spent the next twenty minutes carefully picking through the house, looking for any clues that might help me find little Maddie, but nothing stood out. No Rolodexes filled with the names of drug kingpins. No computers or laptops. No cell phones. Nothing that seemed to indicate that a little girl had ever lived here.
Nothing, that is, except for the Happy Meal box.
I pulled out my cell phone and called Detective Sherbet.
Chapter Twenty
I spent the next two hours with Detective Sherbet and Detective Hanner. I gave them my statement, stood back and watched the preliminary crime scene investigation, and when all the fuss was over, I headed over to Heroes in Fullerton, where Fang worked.
As I walked up to Heroes’ single door, a door which always somehow seemed to be slightly cracked open, I ran a hand through my thick hair and fought a sudden wave of nerves. I adjusted and readjusted my light leather jacket.
It was just after 1:00 a.m. when I stepped inside the bar. Heroes is filled with a lot of wooden beams and colums. The floor creaks when you walk across it, and more often than not, you will find a pool of spilled beer somewhere nearby, reflecting the muted track lighting above.
Aaron Parker, aka Eli something or other, aka the American Vampire, aka Fang, was tending bar alone tonight. He was chatting with two guys in flannel shirts when he looked up and caught my eye. He smiled broadly. It was the same look he had always given me since being hired here months ago.
Since stalking me and taking this job.
I must have mentioned in one of my IMs to him that my sister frequented Heroes. Initially, I had thought I would be more careful than that, but I had let my guard down with Fang. And he had not only found out who I was, but had gotten a job at the very bar I frequented with my sister.
Creepy. And well, sweet, too.
Aaron Parker was clearly a nut. That much was certain. He was also a killer. But, more than anything, he was Fang. My Fang.
Maybe we’re all nuts.
I saw now the hint of longing in his eyes. Saw the deep concern for me. Perhaps it was love. I never noticed it before. Or, if I did, I hadn’t given it much attention. I had been a married woman until recently. Besides, maybe I thought he had been hamming it up for an extra big tip.
But I saw him differently now. In a new light, so to speak. The attention, the intent behind his gaze...all of it was for me.
I took in a small, sharp breath.
He smiled and unconsciously pulled back his upper lip. In that moment, in this lighting, I had a brief flashback to the disturbed teenage boy who seemed to relish pulling back his upper lip in the courtroom, the boy whose fanged smile had made front page headlines across the country.
That boy was a man now. And although he had some plastic surgery, appeared to have grown a foot or more and was sporting a beard, there was enough similarity to give me pause.
He’s a killer, I thought. A mu
rderer.
The tormented young man had grown into something beautiful, but that made him no less tormented or sick. I had not known Fang to be sick. Obsessive, certainly. But his advice had always been spot on, and his caring for me had been genuine. Or, at least, seemed genuine.
And his smile—that sexy, slightly awkward smile—seemed genuine, too. I walked up to the bar just as he reached for a bottle of white wine.
“Hello Sam,” he said easily. The massive teeth that dangled from the leather strap around his neck clanked together with the sound of two thick beer mugs toasting. Clearly the rest of the world thought these were shark teeth. Or perhaps some other creature. Barracuda? Sasquatch?
“Hello Eli,” I said, using his official name, although I sat at the far end of the mostly empty bar.
“We are so formal tonight,” he said.
“We are still in shock from last night.”
“We are?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“You never expected me to be so dashingly handsome, perhaps?”
“I didn’t expect you to be a renowned fugitive.”
He calmly cleaned a shot glass, as if he was just another bartender. “And does that bother you?”
“That you’re a wanted man? That I’m cavorting with a known criminal?”
“Cavorting?”
“It’s a word,” I said.
He grinned easily and leaned across the counter, putting most of his weight on his palms. His two teeth hung freely from his neck like pale corpses twisting in the wind. “It’s kind of a sexy word.”
I looked away. I would have blushed if I could have. “I think you’re taking it out of context.”
“I prefer my context.”
“Are you quite done?” I said. “I thought we were just friends.”
“Just friends? After that kiss last night?”
“That kiss was your idea.”