"See. That's better, isn't it?"
She nodded. In the shelter of Lebekov's slicker, her face relaxed in relief.
Garreth felt his own tension loosen. He savored the clean wetness of the rain streaming down his face, drowning the blood smell. So this vampire ability to control others could be used for more than personal gain. It might actually serve others. So could his strength. In the sound and fury of the storm, that brought a little comfort to his personal corner of hell.
8
"That's Mada in the middle," Mrs. Bieber said.
The photograph showed three little girls sitting on the running board of a twenties-style touring car in front of a house that looked like this one minus an addition and part of the porch. The description Mrs. Armour had given of the photograph in Lane's bookcase made it sound like a copy of this one.
"The other two are my daughter Mary Ellen, who's a year younger than Mada, and their cousin Victoria. Mada and Victoria were about seven then." She cocked her head, smiling at him. "Are you sure you don't have anything more exciting to do with your evenings off than visit an old woman who isn't even a relative?"
Not when he needed to learn everything possible about his quarry. It meant using this friendly old woman, though, which filled him with guilt even as he smiled at her. "You're a friend, aren't you?" He bent over the photo album. "She's about the same size as the others."
"She didn't start growing so tall until later. Here's a picture of her at ten."
There was no mistaking her now, towering over her younger siblings. With the October night chilly and windy outside, Garreth leafed through the album and easily picked Lane out in the subsequent photographs, head and shoulders above any other child she was with.
"She's the brightest of my children. Let me show you something." Mrs. Bieber led him into the dining room and pointed proudly to rows of plaques on one wall, each announcing a First Place in spelling, debate, or archery. "Mada won all those, but she would have given up every one in a moment to be six inches shorter. My heart ached for her so often. She used to come home crying because the other children taunted her about her height. I never knew what to say. Maybe if I'd been older and wiser, but I was barely more than a girl myself, just sixteen when she was born. Later she stopped crying. She developed a terrible temper, flying into a rage at the least remark. She was always fighting someone. That only made matters worse, of course."
Of course. Children, and even adults, turned like animals on someone who looked or acted different. Lane must have made an easy target, too.
Mrs. Bieber said, "'I hate them,' she would sob to me, with such savagery in her voice. 'Someday they'll be sorry. I'll show them they don't own the world.' I tried to teach her to forgive, to be kind to her enemies, but it was many years before she could."
Garreth doubted that Lane ever did. She simply gave up threatening. After all, she had her revenge . . . living off their lifeblood, reducing them to cattle, leaving some of them nothing but dead, dry husks. When she had been bitten by the vampire who made her, whoever it had been, wherever it had happened, how had she felt? Had she cursed, or wept in confusion and dismay, loathing her body for what it had become? Looking at the pictures in the album, imagining the world through the eyes of the tortured child she had been, he thought not. He suspected that she had seen instantly what the change would bring her and embraced hell willingly, even happily, greedily. In her place, perhaps he would, too.
In sudden uncertainty, he snapped the album closed and thrust it back at Mrs. Bieber. Maybe this visit was a mistake. He wanted to know Lane, not sympathize with her, to understand how her mind worked, not feel echoes of her pain in him.
"Is something the matter?" Mrs. Bieber asked in concern.
He gave her a quick smile. "I was just thinking about your daughter's childhood. No wonder she ran away."
She laid her hand on his arm. "It wasn't all that bad. We had happy times here at home. It's still good when everyone gets home together. There's a tenseness and . . . distance in Mada when she first comes that makes me wonder if she's really any happier in all the glitter of those exotic places she goes, but at least she's content and happy here."
He carried the last remark away with him, echoing through his head, chewing at him. She enjoyed coming home. Only this time, instead of a happy family reunion and carefree holiday, she would find a cop waiting, a date with retribution and justice. Mrs. Bieber would be hurt, too, when he arrested Lane.
Unbidden, Lien's quotation from I Ching the day he left San Francisco came back: Acting to recreate order must be done with proper authority. Setting one's self up to alter things according to one's own judgment can end in mistake and failure.
Driving home through the windy night, Garreth felt a nagging doubt and wondered unhappily about the rightness of what he was doing.
9
Handing the keys to the patrol car over to Garreth, Maggie sighed. "Are you sure there isn't any way I can talk you into going on Afternoons? What if I give you my body?"
He grinned. "Danzig is the one to sell yourself to if you want Nights. What's the matter-rough shift today?"
She grimaced. "Aside from breaking up another major assault between Phil and Eldora Schumacher, there was a ten-minute lecture from Mrs. Mary Jane Dreiling on how we're harassing her precious little Scott and I am single-handedly dooming the sanctity of the American Family by not sitting home breeding babies like a normal woman! My teeth still ache from smiling at her."
"What did you ticket little Scott for this time?"
"Playing Ditch'em at fifty miles an hour in that hopped-up van of his. I wish you'd had the watch. Nat's told me that every time some turkey starts giving you a bad time you just peel off your glasses and say, 'It's a nice day, isn't it?' and suddenly you're dealing with a pussycat. What's your secret? Come on, share with a needy fellow officer."
Did he really use his hypnotic ability that much? Frowning, Garreth hefted his equipment belt, readjusting it. The worst part of being back in uniform was becoming reaccustomed to all the weight around his hips. He made himself smile. "It can't be told. The trick is my Irish blood, Maggie darlin'." Dearg-due blood. "It's the gift o' blarney."
She sighed. "I might have known. Well, have fun tonight. You're all alone. With Nat off, Pfannenstiel's working and you know he'll be on his butt somewhere all night working nothing but his mouth." She disappeared through the station door of City Hall.
Garreth checked the equipment in the car and trunk before sliding into the driver's seat still warm from Maggie's body and smelling of her blood. He did not dread the shift. Bill Pfannenstiel, who worked Evening and Morning relief, liked to talk and could be maddeningly slow, but he had twenty-five years of experience and knew every inch of the town. And unlike some of the older generation of officers Garreth had met, he was always willing to try talking through a situation before resorting to force. Garreth suspected that Maggie's dislike stemmed from Pfannenstiel's tendency to call her Maggie-girl honey.
Maggie's remarks about persuasive ability echoed around in his head while he patrolled. Did he use the vampire ability too often and without thinking? He tried not to, no more than necessary. He preferred to act like normal people.
He moved through the business district, checking doors and keeping an eye on the Friday night traffic. He spotted the Dreiling boy's blue van in the thick of it as usual. The kid saw him, too, and leaned out to give him the finger before pulling away.
Later as his and Pfannenstiel's cars parked together in the Schaller Ford lot while they watched traffic, Garreth asked, "What is it with the Dreiling kid? He's inviting someone to come down on him."
Pfannenstiel grunted. "Daring us is more like it. He doesn't think we can touch him. After all, his folks are plank owners."
Garreth blinked. "What?"
"One of the founding families. The town belongs to them."
Garreth eyed the passing cars. "We'll see. The first chance that comes along, I'm writing him up good. It'll cost h
im his license."
Pfannenstiel sighed. "That badge is a pretty big stick, but you want to be careful you don't trip over it."
While Garreth digested that bit of philosophy the radio came to life, putting them back to work. He checked on a barking dog, then rounded up three juveniles who had ripped off two six-packs from a local liquor store. Their parents met him at the station. With the beer paid for, the liquor store owner dropped charges, but watching the boys being dragged away by enraged parents, Garreth wondered if juvenile proceedings might not have been gentler and more humane than what what waited for them at home.
"Like some cookies?" Sue Pfiefer asked. "They're fresh chocolate chips."
He shook his head.
The Evening dispatcher looked down at her plump self and sighed. "I envy your will power." The phone rang. "Baumen police:" Her expression went grim listening. "We'll be right there:" She slammed the receiver down. "That was the Brown Bottle. Bill Pfannenstiel went over to break up a fight and someone hit him. He's unconscious."
Garreth raced for the door.
He found a crowd at the sidewalk outside the Brown Bottle and sounds of breakage coming from inside.
Each crash made the bartender wince. "Mr. Driscoll will be mad as hell about this. Get that lunatic out of there."
"Where's Officer Pfannenstiel?" Garreth demanded.
"Still inside."
Garreth eased around the door, keeping low, baton in hand. He spotted Pfannenstiel immediately, sprawled against the bar with blood running down his face. Anger blazed up in Garreth. He would nail the bastard who did this.
A few patrons still remained . . . but flattened against the walls, too frightened to move toward the door.
With good reason. In the middle of the barroom floor, methodically reducing tables and chairs to kindling, stood a colossus of a man. Garreth guessed his height at near seven feet. His biceps looked bigger around than Garreth's thighs.
"Who is he?" Garreth whispered back at the bartender.
"I don't know. Part of the road crew repairing 282 south of here. His buddies smoked out when he hit Bill with a chair."
Some times talking was not the answer. This was one of them.
"You, Hercules!" Garreth barked. "You're under arrest. Down on your knees!"
The big man whirled. "Another goddamn pig." He sneered drunkenly. "A wimp kid pig. Here, oinker." Picking up a table, he threw it.
Garreth smiled grimly. Two can play that game, turkey. Dropping his baton into its ring on his equipment belt, he caught the table and threw it back.
The gasp from the bartender behind him matched the big man's open-mouthed astonishment. Staring at Garreth, the man almost forgot to duck as the table went by ... and Garreth used the opportunity to trap the man's eyes with his.
"I said, you're under arrest." He felt the other resist him, saw denial in the big man's eyes. He met the drunken hatred with his own anger-driven will, however, and held him. "You will do as I say. Now, stop where you are!"
The man froze, clenched fists half raised, as though he had suddenly become a statue or store-window mannequin.
"Down on your knees!" Garreth snapped. "Hands together on top of your head! Cross your ankles! NOW!"
The man went down so hard the floor shook. Fierce satisfaction flared in Garreth. He felt resistance beneath the compliance, but the man's body still obeyed. Garreth controlled this behemoth. He could make him do anything.
Garreth handcuffed him. "Up." He pointed him at a remaining chair. "Sit . . . and stay."
The prisoner did so.
Garreth was heading for Pfannenstiel, who had pulled himself up to sit with his back against the bar and was fingering the gash on top of his head, when one of the patrons against the walls called, "Hey, that's a good trick. Can you make him heel, too? Or roll over and play dead?"
The words brought Garreth up short. Suddenly he heard himself as those in the bar must have, giving commands in the same tone used on a dog. More, he saw the expressions on the faces. One waited with glee to see what might be next in the show but others showed varying states of fear. He did not need to read minds to know what they feared: him; someone in his position who would treat one man that way could do it to anyone else.
He carried, he realized, a bigger stick than a badge. He carried the biggest stick of all, the power of absolute control, bestowed and limited by no regulatory body. The responsibility for it rested in just one person, Garreth Mikaelian. The thought awed and frightened him. He felt the stick between his ankles, tripping him.
To lighten his step, Garreth said dryly, "The gentleman is through entertaining tonight. Now, I'll need all of you to remain until I can take your names." He crossed to Pfannenstiel and squatted on his heels beside the older officer. "How do you feel?"
Pfannenstiel grunted. "Stupid. I should have known to duck."
Garreth smiled in relief. Pfannenstiel did not appear seriously injured. "You take it easy. The ambulance will be here as soon as Sue rousts out the driver."
Standing again, he worked his way around the room taking names. And while he did, he slid glances at his prisoner. The big man remained motionless in the chair, staring straight ahead. The biggest stick. Walk softly, a voice whispered in his head. Walk very softly.
10
"How I envy you young people sometimes." Mrs. Bieber pointed at Garreth's windbreaker. "It feels like winter today but I see the children out around the high school in nothing more than that. You're so thin, too; aren't you cold?"
"Not as long as I keep moving," he lied.
She pulled a shawl tighter around her shoulders and moved into the living room. "The older I get, the more I hate winter. Mada keeps talking about moving me somewhere like Arizona or Florida."
"It's an idea."
She sighed. "But this is my home. All my children were born in the bed upstairs. The few friends of mine still living are all in this town. Mada called last night and offered to give me a vacation in Mexico as a Christmas present. I wouldn't mind visiting there for a while."
Garreth's stomach plunged. "You mean, go to her this year instead of her coming here?"
She nodded. "Mada said Acapulco is touristy but warm. I'd like that, though of course I would miss not spending Christmas with my grandchildren. Maybe I could go after Christmas."
Garreth's mind churned. Could he get to Acapulco? He tried to think of all he would need . . . a visa, and a plane ticket, which might be hard to come by with no money. Dracula, where are my bat wings when I need them?
Maybe he could find money for driving down, or sell the car and fly. Enough people had eyed the ZX longingly that he should be able to find a buyer. As a place to arrest Lane, aside from the problem of being a foreign country, Acapulco had its attractions . . . principally that it would save Mrs. Bieber the distress of having her daughter taken in her own home by someone the old woman thought was a friend.
"Acapulco sounds nice," he said. "Let me know if you're going, and where you'll be staying." He made himself smile. "I'll send you postcards from the shivering north."
She laughed. "I will."
Silently, he swore. Of all the lousy luck, just when he had himself settled in his web. He had better start planning for the trip now so he could leave the moment he knew where to find Lane.
11
Given the tendency of cops to hang out with other cops and the fact that he and Maggie were the only single officers in the department, Garreth supposed it was inevitable that they should start dating. It also provided a good chance to get out of Baumen. Not that seeing Sudden Impact in Bellamy was very much of an escape, but at least the movie theatre there ran seven nights a week.
Once in the theatre, though, Garreth wondered if the movie was a mistake. He felt as though he were drowning in a sea of blood. The reek of it surrounded him, leaving him fighting cramps and shaking in longing. Someone had been eating Italian food, too; a taint of garlic eddied intermittently, each whiff bringing a moment of suffocation.<
br />
Maggie peered anxiously at him. "Are you all right?"
"Fine." But even saying it he knew the tremor in his voice betrayed the lie. "I . . . get a little claustrophobic sometimes." Not the best excuse in the world with the theatre just half full this Monday night, but it would have to do.
Maggie appeared to believe him. "Do you want to leave?"
He shook his head and put an arm around her. "I'll tough it out."
Somehow he did, though the effort cost him the satisfaction he usually felt watching Dirty Harry blow away bad guy after bad guy with blithe disregard for civil rights, due process, and public safety. It was a relief to escape to the car. There he could at least roll down the window and let the wind dilute the warm blood smell coming from Maggie.
She snapped her seatbelt and settled back. "A little gratuitous violence is good for the soul, don't you think? Have you ever wanted to act like Harry?"
He shrugged. "Sure, especially after spending two weeks tracking down some punk who cuts up girls or old ladies only to learn that he's back on the street before I've finished the paperwork on the arrest."
A nasty whisper in the back of his head asked him if he might not be doing a Callahan now with this self-appointed hunt of his. Setting one's self up to alter things according to one's own judgment can end in mistake and failure. He shook his head inwardly. No. After all, he was not looking to kill Lane, just arrest her, all perfectly legitimate since there was a warrant out on her.
"Did you ever find yourself sympathizing with someone playing vigilante, like Harry did that girl hunting down the men who'd raped her and her sister?"
He shook his head. "I might sympathize, but I'd never let them go like he did. If someone chooses to kill another person, no matter how strong or justified the motive, they should be willing to accept the consequences of their act."
Lord that sounded self-righteous. Would he apply it to himself, too? There was probably no way to know until it happened.
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