Glauer and Simon took turns attempting to talk her out of the cremation altogether. The big cop said it wasn’t necessary, that Raleigh’s death had been an accident. He said that Jameson had never had a chance to pass on his curse. “You were there, the whole time,” he said. “You heard what they said to each other.”
“You can pass the curse on with a look. That’s all it takes,” she insisted.
“But don’t you remember, the curse has to be passed on in silence? Justinia Malvern even called it ‘The Silent Rite.’ If they were talking, they couldn’t do it.”
Caxton considered that a good point, but largely immaterial. “He could have passed her the curse any time. Long before I got there. I was going on her word that she hadn’t had contact with him in six months, but what if she was lying?”
It was Simon’s turn. “She would never do such a thing,” he told her. “She was terrified of the sight of blood. Whenever she would scrape a knee, back when we were kids, she would go run and hide under the sofa.”
“She didn’t seem to mind needles. And where there are needles, there’s blood,” Caxton told him. “She got over it.”
No one could convince her. She couldn’t afford to let anyone convince her. She stormed out of the room and down the hall, into a wardroom where a number of troopers were gathered around some snack machines. “You four, come with me,” she said, and headed out through the main doors of the building. It was cold out in the parking lot and snow was falling—not the blizzardlike torrent she’d seen at Syracuse, just a few scattered flakes, but it made her turn up her collar. “Come on,” she said, and led them behind the building. There were domes back there to hold road salt, and a long low shed that held emergency road barriers. She opened up the wide doors of the shed and ushered in her four draftees. Inside stood hundreds of wooden sawhorses painted in reflective white and yellow. She told each of the men to grab one, and picked one up herself. It was heavy. She didn’t care.
In the parking lot she had the men dump the sawhorses in an untidy heap. She piled her own on top. It didn’t look like enough. “More,” she said, and they went back. One of the troopers asked her what they were doing. She told him to shut up and grab a sawhorse, and he did. They brought their loads back to the parking lot and dropped them on top of the pile with a clattering, clonking noise. The legs of the sawhorses kept them from piling up the way she might like. While she sent the men back for one more round she climbed on top of the pile, then jumped up and down on it, coming down hard on the legs with her boots. Some of them snapped off. The men brought more sawhorses—and she had them dump them and go back again.
Glauer and Simon stood by the doors, watching her. She figured they understood what she was doing, but she wasn’t particularly concerned. They weren’t actively trying to stop her. When the troopers came, grumbling among themselves, with one more load of wood, she nodded in acceptance and rearranged some of the timber to make the pile more symmetrical.
“Now,” she said, “you. Go down to the motor pool and get the biggest jerry can of gasoline they can give you. You two—go inside, into the barracks. There’s a body on one of the beds. Wrap it up in a sheet and bring it out here.”
If the crematorium wouldn’t do it, she’d burn up Raleigh’s remains herself. She climbed on top of the pile and started kicking at the legs again, trying to make a more solid heap of fuel.
“Caxton,” Glauer finally said. He was standing right behind her. “Caxton, this is insane.”
“Is it? There’s a girl in there who could very well wake up at four-thirty as a vampire, thirsty for blood. You’ve seen what they can do, and you know as well as I do that they’re never stronger than the moment they rise.”
“You’re assuming—”
“I’m assuming nothing,” she demanded. “I’m preparing for an eventuality. Given the risks involved, it would be colossally stupid not to do this. When you’re faced with two choices, one that makes everybody happy, and one that isn’t dangerously stupid, you pick the second one. That’s something Jameson taught me.”
“Look, there’s a chance that she’ll rise. There’s also a chance that you’re about to traumatize Simon for life. Why don’t—”
“You admit, then, that there’s a chance. I don’t gamble, Glauer. Now, either help them bring the body out here or get out of my face.”
He reached to take her arm. She swung around, very fast, and punched him in the wrist. He backed away quickly, shaking his arm in pain. It was his fault Raleigh was dead. He had let her commit suicide. If he spoke to her again she planned on hitting him someplace else, like the face or the stomach.
The body was brought out. The troopers had wrapped it in a white sheet, then strung duct tape around the feet and neck to keep the sheet in place. Two troopers lowered it carefully on top of her pile of wood, and a third doused body and wood in gasoline at her instruction. She thought maybe someone should say some words, but the HQ’s chaplain refused to get involved when she called him. She had no idea what to say, herself.
In a trash can she found a crumpled newspaper and she bunched it in her hands. She turned to look at the troopers who had helped her. “Which one of you smokes? I need a lighter.”
They just stared at her.
“Now you’re growing balls? You soaked her with gasoline! What did you think I was going to do?”
A hand descended on her shoulder. She spun around, intending to push Glauer off, but it wasn’t him. Deputy Marshal Fetlock stood there with a look of absolute horror on his face.
“Stop,” he said.
She considered hitting him.
She did not. But it took some effort.
“Who the fuck called him?” she demanded, turning to look at the troopers who stood around her. They were all staring at her, some of them looking more uncomfortable than others. “Glauer? Was it you? So help me—”
“Stop,” Fetlock said again.
“Deputy Marshal,” she said, trying to cool her voice down, make it sound reasonable, “this girl may be infected with the vampire curse. If we don’t destroy her body before sundown, she might come back. I’ve never actually seen it happen. I can only rely on what Jameson taught me. But they come back fast, and they come back very strong. They come back ready to hunt.”
“Stop,” Fetlock said. “Back up.”
He meant physically. She took a step away from the pyre. Then another one. He held up his hand, palm forward, and she took a third step. She dropped her newspaper fire starter on the ground.
He turned to look at Simon, but kept glancing back at her as if he expected her to rush at the pyre and set it alight. The thought had occurred to her. “Simon Arkeley,” he said. “That’s your sister there? We’re not going to burn her today.”
“You’re Caxton’s boss, right?” he asked.
“That’s right, son.” Fetlock turned to face her again, though he continued to address Simon. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“Yeah. Well. I haven’t really had time to process—”
“But maybe,” Fetlock interrupted, “you could go inside and let the police handle police business, alright? Glauer, you keep an eye on him.”
Glauer took the boy inside.
“Now,” Fetlock said, walking toward Caxton. “That’s better.” He came up to her until he was close enough to box her ears. He didn’t. Instead he said: “Give me your star.”
46.
“You can’t do this,” Caxton said. “Not now.”
Fetlock held out his hand.
“Look. She has to be destroyed. If I don’t do it—”
“I’m not a fool, Caxton. I’ll take care of it. But I won’t burn her in the parking lot like this. It’s illegal, for one thing. And it’s the wrong thing to do.”
“You trusted me!” she said. “You said this was going to be my investigation and I could run it as I saw fit. You said you would keep your hands off it.”
“That was back when I thought you were a competent o
fficer. I don’t doubt you know what you’re doing, or that this is important. But your behavior is increasingly erratic and your methods are not acceptable. I’ll take it from here.”
You’ll never find Jameson, she thought. And if you do, he’ll tear you apart. She pressed her lips together until they burned so she wouldn’t say anything. Then she raised her hands to her lapel and unpinned her star. She put it in his hand and watched him shove it into the pocket of his coat.
He moved quickly then. He pointed at the troopers, who were just standing around watching her disgrace. “You and you—get that body off of there. Move it inside, get it in a room with only one door. You—go tell your Commissioner that Laura Caxton is no longer an employee of the federal government. If he wants to take her back as a state trooper that’s his business. Trooper Glauer.”
“Sir,” the big cop said, standing to attention.
“You work directly for me now. Go down to the SSU room and be ready to brief me when I arrive. I want to know everything she’s been doing while I wasn’t here.”
Suddenly the two of them were alone in the parking lot. She stared at him with a growing horror. This was real. She was being removed from the case. Her authority to hunt down Jameson and Malvern was gone.
“Damn it, Fetlock! At least let me cut her heart out!”
His stare, as he looked down his nose at her, was nothing short of reptilian. He held her gaze, pinning her like a vampire hypnotizing his victim, for far too long. Then, finally, his face fell. “Tell you what. We do owe you for getting us this far. I’ll let you watch.”
He went off to give more orders, leaving Caxton alone. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun was already standing on the horizon, ready to sink.
There were things she needed to do before it did. She ran out to her car and squatted next to its driver’s-side door. Careful not to make too much noise, she unstrapped the Velcro that held her holster around her thigh and waist. She looked at the 90-Two with its clip full of Teflon bullets and its flashlight/laser attachment, checking twice to make sure the safety was on and there was no round in the chamber. Opening the door, she shoved her weapon and its holster under the driver’s seat. Opening the glove compartment, she took out her spare pistol—an old-fashioned Beretta 92, the kind she had always carried before Jameson started wearing ballistic vests, and shoved it in her pocket. There was no spare holster for it, but she would just have to make do.
Heading back into the building, she went looking for Glauer, intending to give him a piece of her mind. She found him down in the SSU room obeying orders. “I shouldn’t even let you in here,” he said, looking up from a file cabinet.
“You sold me out,” she said. “You can at least let me check a few things.” She went to the laptop where it sat on the bookshelf and powered it up. She’d never seen a vampire rise on its first night, but she had a bunch of first-person accounts from previous vampire hunters, and maybe she could find something to confirm her fears. She wanted to be forewarned as best as possible about what was going to happen when Raleigh woke up.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when Glauer touched her on the shoulder. She spun around, ready to curse him, or maybe hit him, but he gave her a look of such hurt feelings she couldn’t follow through.
Then he lifted one finger to touch his lips and mustache. She narrowed her eyes—what was he trying to tell her? To be quiet?
He looked down and pointed to her belt. To the cell phone she carried there. She took it out and held it up for him. She’d never liked it, it was too big and clunky, and she would be glad to give it back to Fetlock, if that was what Glauer was after. He did take it from her, but instead of putting it in his pocket he fiddled with it for a second and then shoved his thumbnail into a narrow depression on the back of the case. The battery popped out with a nasty clunk that sounded like plastic breaking. He put the battery and the phone down on a desk next to him.
“You can be a real jerk sometimes, do you know that?” he asked her. “I didn’t call him in. I didn’t need to.”
She stared at the phone. “He was monitoring my calls,” she said. She had known that much. “You aren’t suggesting—”
“He said he’s going to get me one of these phones, too. He told me he could hear everything you said when you had it on you, and most of what was going on around you. There’s a microphone built into the mouthpiece that’s active even when you’re not making a call. He could hear you whenever he wanted to.”
“He was listening to me all the time?” Caxton asked, horrified. “You mean the federal government was spying on me?”
Glauer shrugged. “It’s what they’re good at.”
“Jesus. So much for his hands-off management style.”
“He’s making me the lead on the investigation,” Glauer told her. “But I’m not ready.”
She did something then that was very unlike her. She lurched forward and hugged him, hard. He was so big that her arms barely fit around him. “Just be careful,” she said. “Don’t take chances the way I did. If you think you’re in danger at any time, just run away.” That wasn’t what Jameson had taught her. It was no way to catch a vampire, either. It might keep him from getting killed, though. “I’m sorry I said those things before. About you and Raleigh. I know you did your best—nobody would have thought, looking at her, that she had a sneaky bone in her body.”
“No, you were right. I screwed up. And now I’ve gotten promoted for it.” He hugged her back, hard enough to make her feel like her eyeballs were bugging out, then they both let go. “Listen. The Commissioner isn’t going to like any of this. He’ll probably bust you back down to highway patrol. If there’s anything you need around here, get it now, and put it somewhere safe.”
She nodded her thanks and bent over the remains of the phone. Opening another compartment, she slipped out the SIM card. Before she headed out of the briefing room she took one last look at the whiteboards. Dylan Carboy, Jameson Arkeley, and Justinia Malvern looked back at her. “Good luck,” she said to Glauer, and then headed for her office.
There she copied all of her email to her home account and took down the few personal effects she’d used to ornament the walls—a picture of Clara at the annual auto show, a picture of Wilbur, one of the dogs she’d rescued, her certificates from the Academy. She shoved them in a manila envelope and tucked it under her arm. From her desk drawer she took her old phone and put the SIM card back in, then tucked the phone in her pocket. She had no doubt Fetlock would know what she’d done, but she didn’t care.
Leaving the office, she started toward the Coke machine. All this humiliation and public chastisement was making her thirsty, but she stopped before she could get there. Suzie Jesu-roga, the captain of the area response team, was standing in the hall in front of her. Captain Suzie, as Caxton knew her, was wearing a full suit of riot armor, including helmet, and carrying a patrol rifle, a big semiautomatic assault rifle.
“Hi,” Caxton said. She knew Captain Suzie relatively well, had worked with her on occasion. She had no idea what the other woman was doing there. “Something I can help you with?”
“Vice versa, it sounds like,” the Captain said. “Come on, this Fetlock guy said I should come and fetch you.”
“Jesus, what time is it?” Caxton asked. She looked down at her own watch—it was four-fifteen. She whirled around to look out the windows and saw the sun was just a smear of orange on the horizon. It was going to set in a matter of minutes.
47.
They’d chosen a room with a west-facing window, so they could see the sun. It washed Fetlock’s face with a dull red glow and made his eyes gleam. He stood stock-still before a wide wooden desk where they’d laid Raleigh’s body, still wrapped and taped up in a sheet.
Behind Fetlock, their backs up against the wall, the members of Captain Suzie’s ART stood at attention, their patrol rifles at low ready. Caxton required no explanation. If Raleigh did rise when the sun went down, they would open fir
e instantly.
It was more than she’d hoped for. More than she’d expected. Maybe it would be enough. She stepped up to the doorway and ran one hand along the jamb. Fetlock heard her come and turned his head a fraction of an inch. He nodded at her, and she nodded back. No matter what had happened between them, or what was to happen to Caxton now, they were together on this one thing. Raleigh would not be allowed to come back.
The sun widened on the horizon and lost its shape. The snow on the ground outside glowed almost bloodred, and the clouds in the sky were streaked with purple and orange. It was 4:29, and sunset that day would take place at exactly 4:31.
Caxton kept track of such things. She had to know every day when the night began.
The room filled with fumes from the gasoline that soaked Raleigh’s sheet. The liquid rolled across the top of the desk and dripped to the floor. Caxton found she was holding her breath and she let it go, then breathed in the sharp tang of the gas.
The sun fluttered in the hills. Caxton drew her weapon, her old 92, and held it tight against her thigh. Ready to shoot at the first sign. What would it be? she wondered. A twitch of the sheet, down near its middle where Raleigh’s hands must be? Would Raleigh open her mouth, surprised by her brand-new teeth, and would the sheet deform over her face in response? Maybe she would sit up slowly, deliberately. Or maybe she would scream to find herself trapped inside the stinking shroud.
Fetlock’s digital watch beeped once, and everyone in the room shifted or jumped a little. The beep meant only that it was 4:30 exactly: it was only signaling the half hour. One of the ART members laughed, a dry chuckle that didn’t go anywhere and didn’t catch on.
It had been all Caxton could do to not lift her weapon, to not start firing blindly into the sheet-covered corpse. She tried to force herself to relax, to at least ease her fierce grip on the gun. She tried to breathe calmly, deeply. Outside the sun was just a fragment of its former self. She could look right at it without pain. Breathe, she told herself again. Breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out.
Vampire Zero: A Gruesome Vampire Tale Page 24