by Lee Killough
“I’ve never seen you wake so fast. You do feel threatened. Your grandmother was right to call me.”
He lay gaping at her, head swimming. What was she doing here? How did she get in the room? If she could, then so could Harry...and find him gone. His gut knotted. Then her last statement registered. “Grandma Doyle called you? Why? How? You were in Hawaii.”
“She asked for my sister’s number before I left.”
He pulled himself up to sit on the bed, even more confused. Why would his grandmother do that?
The question must have shown on his face. “Just in case, Grania said. Because she had a Feeling. I told Harry I came home because I Ching suggested I’m needed and tried to make him tell me what’s going on. He wouldn’t, because I’m sure he thinks it will distress me. As if I’m not already by not knowing. And even though he left for the Hall without you because you told him you wanted to sleep in, now he’s called and wants you to come right away. He tried to hide it but I could tell he’s upset. So...” She pinned him with a stare. “...get dressed and when you come down to the kitchen...you will talk to me.”
Her willingness to aid and abet after he killed Lane earned her that from him even if he could not bring himself to reveal the whole truth. So he presented himself at the kitchen counter, shaved and dressed, ready to talk. Only to freeze when he saw her pouring blood from a thermos into a mug.
But she set it in front of him saying only: “Okay....talk.”
He talked...but soon realized that while events could be interpreted as an attempt to cast suspicion on him, omitting mention of vampires, his night excursions, and the reason Girimonte equated him with her sister made a feeble case for her being the individual framing him.
When he finished, Lien, who had listened with an ever more troubled frown, shook her head. “No. You can’t get away with that, too. Tell me the rest. For instance, why did news of finding Lane’s apartment bring you out here when you know the hunt for her is pointless since she’s dead?”
She deserved trust, but the thought of her reaction to “the rest” stopped the words in his throat. “I thought Harry might wonder if I wasn’t interested in being in on her capture.”
“I’m sure you could have made adequate excuses.” Lien eyed him. “Or were you afraid she wasn’t dead after all, that in spite of everything, she used some vampire power to escape and survive?”
Shock froze him, clutching the mug in nerveless fingers. Chaos roared in his head. She knew about Lane! Then it followed must have deduced...
The thought broke off as he realized he saw not horror or fear in her face but impatience. “Yes...I know about you.” Obviously reading his own expression. “After you left, the little oddities began adding up. After all, I am Chinese, and we understand reality is more than it appears. Once we made gods of characters in novels. So I talked to your grandmother, who initially declared you dead, remember, and she confirmed what happened to you.” Lien sighed. “I kept waiting for you to tell me, especially when helping you figuratively bury Lane’s body.”
He felt his face burn. “I’m...sorry.” Lame, lame, lame apology. Totally inadequate.
She sighed again. “Were you really so afraid how I’d react?”
The telephone saved him from another inadequate answer. Lien picked up the extension in the kitchen, and sighed. “He’s on his way, Harry. It just took a while to get him up. You know how he is, like waking the dead. I had to shove out the doorstop with a yardstick and go in and shake him.” She hung up. “I guess you’d better go. We’ll talk more this evening. And...we will talk.”
He met her eyes and nodded.
“But first...is she dead?”
“Yes.”
“Then you certainly need this.” She handed him a memo sheet.
Number Twenty-nine, he read. The Abysmal. If you are sincere, you have success in your heart and whatever you do succeeds.
He looked up into a grave expression. His stomach flipped. “Isn’t this good?”
She shook her head. “A change line in the third place means that every step, forward or backward, leads into danger. There is no escape. You must wait for the way out.”
His gut clenched. “No escape? The change line makes a second hexagram. What’s that one?”
“Number Forty-eight, The Well. It’s a little ambiguous, but in this context, I think it reinforces the first hexagram.”
Every step, whatever direction, led into danger. All the way downtown through air undecided whether to be rain or fog, he kept reminding himself that I Ching did not tell fortunes. But cold bit deep into his bones.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Walking into Homicide did nothing to melt that ice, either, as Girimonte turned from where she stood by Harry’s desk to stare at him, and other inspectors looked up to eye him. Over by the coffee pot Fowler wiggled eyebrows energetically to catch his eye and mouthed something Garreth could not make out.
Shrugging it off, Garreth headed for Harry and made his tone casual. “So...what’s up?”
Girimonte answered. “Someone broke into the Philos offices last night and pried open a file cabinet.”
He blinked. The prowler Ayesha sensed had come back after all? “And?” The stares and Harry’s insistence he come down meant this involved more than someone going after files. And he had a sick premonition about that more.
“Killed the next door neighbor, Ayesha Achebe.” Harry shook his head. “I guess she heard noise and came to investigate. God knows why, instead of calling the police.”
Girimonte said, “I guess she didn’t see this in her crystal ball. Look familiar?” She opened a ring binder with a new case number label on the front and pulled out a pile of Polaroids she spread across Harry’s desk.
They showed Ayesha sprawled on her stomach in the break room in a puddle of water and sodden fabric...head wrenched almost as far around as Holle’s had been and marks across the exposed portion of her face that looked like blows from a hard, narrow object. The crowbar used on the file cabinet?
Garreth cursed silently and savagely. Had she come because despite sensing the hatred she thought the burglar was no match for a vampire...and as Girimonte suggested, had not foreseen her death?
“Fortunately,” Girimonte continued, “the patrol unit responding to the silent alarm found a witness who’s given us a suspect.”
Harry’s poker face set off alarm bells in Garreth. He knew that expression...intended to hide all feelings about the zinger on the way. Had someone seen him after all when he tripped the motion sensor of that yard light?
Across the room, Fowler mouthed at him again, but the word remained incomprehensible.
“The witness says a man came out the front door of Philos around three, jumped over the rail of the steps to the driveway, and walked away at almost a run, and described him as a little shorter than one of the officers, who was five-ten, so...maybe five-eight? Looked in his early twenties, thin, wearing a blue and yellow windbreaker and a dark colored ball cap, maybe blue, with a wolf on it and light-colored lettering that started with ‘BA’. Like your jacket and cap there.”
Now he understood what Fowler was saying: frame.
“It wasn’t my jacket and cap.” Not saying: I didn’t wear these last night. The kind of idiotic admission that had trapped more than one felon. “I was home at Harry’s all night. Right, Harry?”
But instead of an affirmative nod, he got uncertainty in the almond eyes.
Girimonte gave him a cold smile.“He told us your alibi plan, but it seems to me that mostly prevented him from doing a visual bed check. So he can’t really confirm you were there.”
Garreth swore silently. She would have to see that. Now Harry was wondering wondered if he’d been tricked. He put an edge on his voice. “He saw the doorstop and that can’t be wedged in from the outside.”
Girimonte leaned back against Harry’s desk. “Oh, I think a clever boy like you can figure a way around that.”
His stomach cle
nched. So maybe she did know about vampires and doors. But...would she dare admit that...or to any belief in vampires and risk sounding as loony as most of the detail thought he was. He had an urge to challenge her and find out. You’re smarter than I am; show me how I’d manage that.
But that sounded defensive. Better to take the offensive...in a pleasant tone of voice. “Whether I did is easy enough to settle. See if the witness can identify me in a lineup.”
From his office doorway, Serruto said, “Right. Get him in here. You have a problem with that, Mr. Fowler!” he added when the writer snorted.
Fowler shook his head. “No. I am merely expressing skepticism about finding that witness.”
Serruto frowned. “You don’t believe we will?”
Around the office, eyes focused on Fowler.
He shrugged. “I believe it was a role created to deliver that rubbish identification. Such extraordinary vision...middle of the night, tipping down, yet able to see the individual’s face well enough to speculate on age and tell the color of his clothing.”
“You think the witness was Lane Barber?” Girimonte said. “That this burglary and murder are part of the theory you have that she’s trying to frame Mikaelian?”
Fowler leveled a stare at her. “When Inspector Wilde turned the case over to you, he said the uniformed officer thought the witness was a tall women presenting herself as male. Our Miss Barber cross-dresses we know. Consider this, also: aside from the question of what Mikaelian could possibly want in the Philos files...if he is clever enough to leave a room with the door wedged closed from the inside, credit him with the intelligence not to go burgling in distinctive clothing, nor forego a quiet lock pick for noisily jimmying the cabinets, nor leave by the front door instead of nipping out the back.”
Girimonte shook her head. “You consider this: what’s Barber’s motive for such a plot? That he survived her attack? If that bothers her so much, why not just go straight for him and finish the job?”
In a skip of pulse, Garreth wondered if Fowler would tell her about Baumen.
No. The writer’s lips thinned, visibly holding back the words.
Girimonte turned away from him and Serruto said, “I think we’ll still look for the witness. You have the name, Takananda. Any address?”
“No, but he/she claimed to work cleaning up at Amigo’s, the bar across the street from Philos.”
“Get her address from them, then. But you stay put, Mikaelian.”
“You’re not coming, Fowler?” she asked, as she and Harry started for the door but Fowler remained by the coffee pot.
“I think I shall pass this time, thank you.”
The carton of Fowler’s books had been moved from Cory Yonning’s desk to his visitor’s chair. Garreth picked one of the three still in the box, intrigued by the title, The Man Who Traveled in Murder, and sat at Harry’s desk.
Fowler strolled over. “I don’t generally admit to favorites among my books but I am rather fond of this one. The protagonist is an agent specializing in wet work for a small, very secret government agency the government doesn’t admit exists. However—”
“He’s an assassin.”
“Um...” Fowler smiled. “Yes. However, as I was about to say, now the target is personal...a woman who murdered his brother. A woman he discovers is as deadly as he is.” He went serious. “But why bother with fiction when there is a real life woman out there who is just as deadly, and out for your blood.” He lowered his voice. “You know that witness was Barber. The name she gave the officer: Delbert Black? Mada used the name Della Black for her act in Nice. You’re just lucky you have an alibi and she screwed up by basing her description on what she has undoubtedly seen you wear as she spied on you during the day.”
Clothes Girimonte had seen him wear.
“We need to find Barber before she gets lucky and manages to fit you up good and proper.”
Another futile hunt...and an action that according to I Ching would take him into danger. At least he had an excuse to avoid going. “Serruto ordered me to stay here.”
Fowler frowned. “Since the witness doesn’t exist, why wait for a lineup that won’t happen?”
“The lieutenant might take leaving as an indication of reluctance to be seen in a lineup.”
Fowler traded his frown for pursed lips. “Ah yes. No doubt. On the other hand, it might be problematic if Barber were, say, to hire someone to be a witness and falsely identify you.”
A chill ran down his spine. Did that illustrate a danger of remaining here? Because Girimonte could arrange that too. But hopefully not on short notice. “I’ll face that if it happens. Meanwhile, right now I have a solid alibi for anything that happens today.”
Fowler shrugged. “As you will.” Then smiled. “Well, perhaps I shall get lucky.”
He swept his trench coat off Girimonte’s visitor’s chair and strode out.
Garreth opened the book...and closed it and laid it aside. As Fowler said, why bother with fiction when they had a real killer out there. He picked up the Polaroids on Harry’s desk. What ever made Ayesha to go over to Philos? Ankles bared in one photo showed scarring that could be from leg irons. If she had been a slave, that gave her at a few centuries of survival training. So...how had she let herself end up in a position to be overpowered? Had she really not sensed personal danger?
One person might know.
He reached for the phone and dialed home in Davis.
His mother answered. In the midst of answering that no, they had not yet caught Lane Barber, and yes of course he would visit Davis before heading back to Kansas, she gasped, “Mother!”
Because Grandma Doyle had snatched the phone. His grandmother snapped, “What’s happening? I See danger closing on you, a darkness stealing your breath!”
The echo of Ayesha’s warning of suffocation shot ice through him. But was it real suffocation or symbolic....maybe from Girimonte showing up with someone claiming to have seen him at Philos. “Do you see where the danger’s coming from?”
“No. I just see you choking, trying to breathe, in the power of an enemy close to you. Can it be the Barber creature?”
“No. She is definitely d— ”
He broke off as a whispered argument between his mother and grandmother began at the other end. Though a hand over the receiver muffled his mother’s voice, he heard her angrily demanding to know about this danger his grandmother Felt and why nothing had been said to her. While they sorted it out, Garreth went back to studying the crime scene Polaroids.
Then his mother came on the line. “Garreth, if you knew there was danger, why did you go!”
He ignored that question since she already knew why — like his father, he was a cop — and answered the one she was really asking. “I’m being careful, and right now I’m sitting in Homicide at the Hall of Justice. I can’t be much safer.”
Was he?
But now he needed his grandmother back on the phone so he could ask about psychics seeing their own future. Then he found himself staring at the photo showing Ayesha’s feet and ankles. The bare pink soles, such a contrast to the rest of her skin color and paler yet lit up by the camera flash, stared out at him like headlights. Not just bare soles but clean soles. Earlier she had come to the front door barefooted. Her wet clothing indicated she must have come not via the shelter of the porches but across the decks through the rain. Had she put on shoes of some kind for the trip?
Quickly he shuffled through the rest of the Polaroids, checking what they showed of floor space around the body but found no footwear. That changed everything.
Trying not to sound impatient, he gave his mother more reassurances and hung up. Then carrying the photos, he knocked on Serruto’s door. “The neighbor didn’t interrupt the burglary. Her feet are clean.” He dropped the Polaroids on the desk and pointed at the one showing Ayesha’s feet. “If she came in from that deck you can see through the doors beyond her body in this other photo, they should be wet and dirty. She had to be
carried over to Philos after being killed her in her own place.”
Serruto’s head jerked up to stare at him. “What? Even if she did something that made him interrupt breaking in to go after her next door, why the hell would he haul the body back with him?”
“Because a body made it your case. Burglary investigating wouldn’t connect me to the description the witness gave of the man fleeing the scene.”
For a moment Serruto’s eyes widened, then he grimaced in disgust. “Jesus, Mikaelian. Don’t let Fowler’s imagination run away with you! This is the real world. The victim’s feet are clean because she wore slippers over and they came off in the struggle with her killer. If you don’t see them in the Polaroids, they’ll show up in the crime scene boys’ photos.”
It did sound more reasonable than a plot to get him. Except he knew Ayesha’s history with the intruder and his gut told him there were no slippers in the break room.
“But...” Serruto sighed. “...I’ll have Takananda and Girimonte check out the neighbor’s place. Now get out of my hair. Go sit down and wait for that witness.”
He went and sat. But kept staring at the photos. Even knowing she had not been foolish enough to come over after the intruder, the question remained: how had the killer managed to overpower and kill her? A stun gun explained how other vampires and Holle were rendered vulnerable, but Ayesha would not have let anyone close enough for that when she sensed menace in them.
After being driven away earlier, had the killer come back armed with something for disabling at a distance? Like a dart gun...or a weapon firing rubber bullets. Being hit by the latter might shock Ayesha long enough for the killer to rush her and break her neck. Either had to leave evidence, a puncture or a bruise. Could he come up with an excuse that would let him check the body?
Maybe one.
After a glance toward Serruto’s office and a moment thinking about his grandmother’s warning, he scribbled a note and the ME’s number on Harry’s memo pad, then headed out of the office. After all, he was still technically in the Hall...and what could happen to him between here and the morgue.