BloodWalk

by BloodWalk (lit)

From the doorway, Holle appeared to be merely asleep, lying on his back in bed, the blankets pulled up to his chin. To Garreth, however, the reek of blood, stagnant and clotting in death, pervaded the room, and on second glance, peering over Harry's shoulder, the pillow showed red stains.

  Fowler craned his neck to see over Girimonte. "That isn't much blood for a slashed throat. It ought to be everywhere."

  "Not if the killer drained Holle dry first, or used the knife after the victim was dead," Harry said. He turned toward the housekeeper hovering tearfully in the hall where she could not see into the bedroom. "Ms. Edlitza, I can understand you coming up to check on him when he slept so much later than usual, and going in and realizing he wasn't breathing, but why are you so sure his neck is broken and his throat cut?"

  She choked out: "I saw the bloodstain, and-" Her voice broke. "And I looked under the covers."

  Harry exchanged quick glances with Girimonte. "Only one of us better go in. I'll do it. Ms. Edlitza," he suggested gently, "why don't you go join the others in the library now?" When she had gone, he crossed to the bed and lifted one side of the blankets.

  "Good god," Fowler whispered.

  Garreth swallowed.

  Under the blankets, Holle's body lay face down. A wound gaped in the throat, pulled into a spiral by the near one-eighty twist of the neck.

  "Arguing with you is becoming fatal, Mikaelian," Girimonte said. "You didn't happen to be restless and out driving after the party last night, did you?"

  Anger flared at the acid edge on her voice. "I was home sleeping it off like everyone." Beneath the anger, however, consternation churned in him. Irina. It had to be Irina doing this, logic said, though why she could be so desperate to cover her tracks he still had no idea. Lane, his gut insisted. She has the motive, Mikaelian. But how could it possibly be Lane?

  His only answer was her laughter echoing in his head.

  Harry dropped the blankets back into place. "Van-" he began sharply, only to glance at Fowler and break off. Torn between loyalty to his old partner and the desire to avoid arguing with the new one in front of an outsider?

  That, too, Garreth reflected, but something else also showed in the almond eyes, something new that tightened his throat . . . uncertainty. In his head, he watched the fires on the bridge blaze higher.

  The doorbell rang downstairs. Over the hall railing, Garreth saw one of the uniformed officers from the black-and-white responding to the initial call open the door. The team from the crime lab trooped in with its equipment.

  "Up here, Yoshino," Harry called down. "If you need us, send a uniform to the library. Where we'll be listening to what our witnesses have to say before we make accusations, right, partner?" he said to Girimonte, and headed up the hall toward the front of the house.

  Today the library looked incongruously cheerful. Someone had opened the drapes and light flooded the room. Three guests waited with the housekeeper: an attractive dark-haired woman and a young couple who looked pasty-pale under their tans and sun-streaked hair.

  Garreth moved around the walls to stand by the fireplace, as far from the windows as possible.

  Harry slid the doors closed. "Thank you for waiting. I'm Sergeant Takananda. This is Inspector Girimonte, Officer Mikaelian, and Mr. Fowler. Mr. Fowler is a writer riding along with us to do research for a book. Does anyone have objections to talking with him present?"

  After a quick glance at each other, the guests and housekeeper shook their heads.

  Harry smiled. "Then shall we begin? You are?" He pointed first at the dark­haired woman, then the couple.

  "Susan McCaul. That's spelled M-C-C-A-U-L."

  "Alan and Heather Osner," the man said.

  "You're all guests and were sleeping in the house last night?"

  They nodded.

  "When did you last see Mr. Holle?"

  "As everyone was leaving for the ballet," the housekeeper said. She fished a sodden tissue out of her dress pocket and mopped at a new flood of tears.

  McCaul bit her lip. "We all got back about one-thirty. He bolted the front door and was headed in the direction of the kitchen when I went upstairs to my room."

  Osner nodded. "He said he was going to check the rear door and turn on the security system."

  "I heard him coming up the back stairs a little later," Osner's wife said.

  "Did anyone see or talk to him after that?" Girimonte asked.

  They shook their heads.

  Harry said, "What sounds did you hear later on in the night? We need to know all of them, even something you might think is insignificant."

  "I didn't hear anything," McCaul said. "I went to bed and d-" She broke off, throat working, then a breath or two later, stumbled on in a strained voice: "I went straight to sleep. The next thing I heard was-was Ms. Edlitza screaming."

  "Me, too," Mrs. Osner said.

  Her husband nodded. "I slept straight through."

  The hair raised on Garreth's neck. "None of you woke up? Not for any reason? No one made a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom?"

  "No." They shook their heads.

  Then unless one of them was lying or walked in his sleep, the footsteps Garreth heard had to belong to the killer. They sounded again in his head, a stealthy whisper on the stairs from the third floor. God. He had fled from them and left Holle alone to die.

  "Ms. Edlitza," Girimonte asked the housekeeper, "were all the doors still bolted this morning?"

  The housekeeper nodded.

  "What about the security system?"

  "On and functioning."

  "But someone got in past everything." Garreth raised a brow at Harry. "Maybe we ought to find out how."

  Girimonte snapped her notebook shut. "I'll check the ground floor."

  "And I'll take this one," Harry said. He recorded the home addresses of the three guests, then smiled politely at them and the housekeeper. "Thank you all very much for your cooperation. That should be it for now, except I do ask that you please keep out of the areas our officers and crime lab have marked off until we've finished examining them for evidence."

  Garreth caught the housekeeper's eye. "I'll check the upper floors, if Ms. Edlitza will be kind enough to guide me."

  Girimonte stopped in midstride heading for the library door and turned, frowning. Harry hesitated visibly, too, but said, "All right."

  The housekeeper followed them into the hall. As they reached the stairs, however, Fowler started up after her and Garreth.

  Garreth waved him away. Go with the others, he mouthed.

  Fowler's brows rose, but after a moment, he turned and trotted downstairs after Girimonte.

  Garreth and the housekeeper continued on to the attic alone, where he began checking windows, starting with those in the rear bedroom. He pulled aside the heavy drapes. The window was firmly latched.

  Outside, the sun no longer shone so brightly, he noted with relief. Clouds had begun rolling in from the west to darken the sky. It would be raining by noon.

  He dropped the drapes back in place. "Where did Irina go?"

  The housekeeper started. "Who?"

  Garreth sighed. "Don't you play that game with me, too. This was her room. It still smells of her perfume." He pulled off his glasses. "When did she leave and where's she gone?"

  She hissed and spun away. "Don't you try that with me! The agreement is that your kind will respect the rules of hospitality in this house. You take no advantage and touch no one."

  So she, too, recognized him for what he was. "Then talk to me."

  She glanced around cautiously, eyes narrow. "What do you want with Miss Rudenko?"

  Rudenko! So that was the name Irina used now. He put the glasses back on. "I couldn't very well mention it in front of the other officers but we know she can easily come in and leave without disturbing either the alarms or door bolts."

  The housekeeper turned on him scornfully. "That's ridiculous! Mr. Holle and Miss Rudenko are-" Her eyes filled. She groped in her pocket for another
tissue and wiped her eyes. "They were friends."

  Friends? With a vampire? Knowingly? Garreth wished he had time to pursue the question. "Friends fight and fall out. Irina left very suddenly, didn't she?"

  The lady did not shake easily. Give her that. "It had nothing to do with any disagreement." She blew her nose. "Shouldn't you be checking the other windows in case you're wrong about who came in last night?"

  Exasperation hissed through Garreth. What hold did Irina have that kept these people so closemouthed? Promises of immortality, like Dracula gave the wretched Renfield? He smiled thinly. "Maybe you should start thinking up explanations to give Sergeant Takananda about why you keep bottles of human blood in your refrigerator and where it comes from." Where did it come from?

  Not even that rattled her. She just sniffed. "Blackmail? You're wasting the effort. I really don't know where Miss Rudenko is."

  Her voice carried a ring of truth. Garreth sighed and headed for the door. "Let's check the other windows."

  Those in the bedrooms were all secure with no signs of tampering. As expected.

  "There are two storage rooms," the housekeeper said. "Shall I unlock them?"

  A quick vision of finding footprints in the dust and having the crime lab identify them as his flashed through Garreth's head. He eyed the dead bolt on each door. "Do they unlock from the inside?"

  "No."

  "Then I think we can skip those windows. No one could get out into the rest of the house except . . . someone like me."

  Not quite true, but if he mentioned someone could open the doors from the inside by pulling the hinge pins, she might insist on examing the store rooms. He headed down the stairs to the third floor.

  The windows on that floor were all locked, too, including those in the housekeeper's rooms. Ms. Edlitza kept a cross above her bed, the Eastern Orthodox type with a double crossbar.

  Garreth raised his brows. "Insurance?"

  Her mouth thinned. "No, religion. Insurance would be an atomizer full of garlic juice."

  Mace, vampire style. Just the thought of the scent left Garreth feeling suffocated.

  A whoop went up in the hall. He and the housekeeper raced out to find Fowler at a window by the back stairs. "It's unlocked!"

  Harry and Girimonte came pounding up from the second floor.

  Fowler used a pen to push open the window and leaned out without touching anything. "There's nothing but wall below, though. You'd need bloody wings to reach it."

  Girimonte looked out the window, too. "No, I'd say he let himself down from the roof. Standard technique. Isn't that what you learned in Burglary, Mikaelian?"

  If anyone had actually come in the window. Garreth was willing to bet that Irina opened it from the inside to satisfy human investigators with an obvious entry point for an intruder.

  Harry said, "We'd better get someone up here to dust for prints."

  The housekeeper squeezed past them down the back stairs. "How reassuring to know we're not dealing with someone who walks through bolted doors. I think I'll make myself some tea."

  The rest of them headed down the front stairs.

  In Holle's room Bill Yoshino nodded at Harry's request for a technician. "Sure thing. Linda," he called to one of the team brushing fingerprint powder on the faucet handles in the adjacent bathroom, "you go when you're finished there. Glad you've come, Harry. I was about to send a uniform for you. We have a couple of things that ought to interest you."

  The smells of living blood overlaid that of death, though not enough to mask it completely. The combination sent a small wave of nausea through Garreth.

  An assistant M.E., an Hispanic woman, leaned over the body on the bed. She looked around as everyone trooped in. "Good morning, Sergeant Takananda. Gruesome. Is this one tied to that midnight cowboy Mitch Welton posted yesterday? The injuries look alike."

  "The two could be related."

  "Then maybe this one is a Martian, too. That will-"

  Harry started. "Martian?"

  The assistant M.E. grinned. "That's Dr. Thurlow's name for people with the certain anomalies. Mitch was all excited about the ones he found in his stiff. He was going to write it up for journal publication. Then Dr. Thurlow said there've been three others like him in the past ten years."

  "What anomalies?" Fowler asked.

  Head them off at the pass, man. "Harry, look," Garreth said. He touched a vertical cut above Holle's left eye. "Did he do it or did the killer hit him?"

  "I'm more curious about the time of death," Girimonte said.

  The assistant M.E. shrugged. "He hasn't been dead more than a few hours. The body's still warm and there's no rigor except in his jaw and neck."

  "It happened after the party folded, then." Girimonte raised a brow at Garreth.

  Harry's forehead furrowed. He turned toward Yoshino. "You wanted to show me something?"

  "Yeah." Yoshino pointed at Holle's arms. "Look at his wrists, first off."

  A narrow, abraided groove circled each. Garreth bit his lip. At some point Holle had been tied tightly with something thin, like drapery cord, and struggled desperately against his bonds.

  "Look at this, too." Yoshino pointed at the hair coming down over Holle's forehead. It lay in clumped points. "It's been wet. The pillow under him is still damp."

  Harry felt the pillow. "What else?"

  "In the bathroom." Yoshino led the way through the connecting door into a bathroom the size of a small ballroom, lushly carpeted in blue shag that covered even the steps around two sides of the sunken tub. "We've got more water in here . . . a soggy rug in front of the washbowl, and marks where splashes on the counter and mirror have dried."

  Harry knelt down to feel the carpet. "He didn't do this brushing his teeth."

  "Uh-uh. We also collected skin and blood off the edge of the faucet. I'd say that's where your dead man cut his forehead."

  "Christ," Fowler whispered down at Garreth. "Shadow Games."

  Harry snapped around. "What?"

  Fowler grimaced sheepishly. "One of my books. There's a point in it where the protagonist Charlie Quayle needs information from one of the villain's henchmen he's captured. He gets it by filling up the washbowl in his hotel room and dunking the henchman until he's almost drowned."

  And that had happened to Holle. Anger flared in Garreth. It was so pointless. Why resort to torture when a little hypnotic persuasion would make Holle answer any question Irina asked? Or did she have to use force because Holle, like the housekeeper, knew how to resist? Garreth felt sick. If he had only thought of using his own hypnotic powers on the person on the stairs this morning and stayed long enough for a confrontation. He would have met Irina instead of a curious guest, of course, and they might have clashed as he had with Lane. Irina being even older and more experienced than Lane, this time he would probably have lost the duel, but . . . Holle might still be alive.

  "The killer wanted information?" Girimonte asked. She frowned at Harry. "That doesn't fit Barber. Why should she have to torture information out of a man who's been her friend and caretaker? What kind of information could she want anyway?" Her gaze slid toward Garreth. "It doesn't fit Barber."

  Harry stiffened.

  Did she ever let up? Garreth wondered angrily. "Why don't you can it, Girimonte."

  Harry sighed. "Both of you can it." He frowned. "The killer tortured Holle and Holle struggled, but the only signs of it are in here. Because he knew, and trusted, the person, and didn't realize his danger until he was in here and it was too late? That would fit Barber."

  The assistant M.E. appeared in the bathroom doorway. "If you're finished with the body, we'll take it now, Sergeant."

  "Fine." Harry watched from the door while they zipped Holle into a body bag and wheeled out the stretcher, then turned away, grimacing. "So much for the fun part. It's time to talk to the neighbors, partner. One of us needs to stay here until Yoshino and his people are finished, though, so how do you want to handle it? Flip a coin?"

  S
he stretched with a cat's grace. "You're the sergeant. You stay. I'll hit the bricks. Want to come along, Mr. Fowler?"

  "Too right!" The writer grinned. "Just let's stop at the car first long enough to pick up my mac. The heavens look ready to open any moment."

  Harry and Garreth followed the other two out into the hall, where Harry leaned on the railing watching them trot down the staircase and across the hall out the front door. "She's a good cop, Mik-san."

  "She certainly has her ideas about who the killer is."

  It came out more acid than Garreth intended. Harry straightened abruptly. "You have to admit you've been in some wrong places at the wrong times. She's raised some good points, too. Why would Lane torture Holle for information? What information?"

  The same questions applied to Irina, unfortunately. Could some other vampire be involved, one with other interests here, someone he did not know?

  "As computers say, Harry-san: Insufficient data. Will not compute. The housekeeper said she was making tea. Shall I see if I can talk her into some for us?"

  Harry shook his head. "None for me, but you go ahead. You didn't have breakfast and I expect it's going to be a long time until lunch."

  Garreth found the housekeeper at a table in the kitchen with tea, but crying over it, not drinking it. He touched her shoulder. "I'm sorry to bother-"

  She started violently. Jumping up, she snapped, "Why don't you people ever walk so someone can hear you!"

  He sighed. "I'm sorry. Ms. Edlitza, do you meet many of my kind?"

  "What's many? I meet some." She bustled away toward the sink with her teacup. "Mostly they're the same ones over and over, like Miss Rudenko. She's been visiting since I was a child and my parents were part of a full staff here." A fat raindrop hit the window over the sink, followed by another, and another, until it streamed down the win­dow in a sheet.

  "Irina and who else?"

  Water blasted into the sink. Rain hammered on the window. "Are you trying to involve others in this, too?"

  He hissed in exasperation. "What I'm trying to do is find out who killed Mr. Holle!"

  Her head bent suddenly. Her shoulders heaved in a soundless sob.

  The anger leaked out of Garreth. He sighed. "Ms. Edlitza, I need to meet some of the others, and I don't know how or where."