An Overlord’s duties were simple. Protect his charges. Mediate disputes. Ensure that the needs of the vampire community were met. But more often than not the cause of a problem involved humans. Vampires lived in human society. They mimicked their prey, indulging in the latest fashions and embracing the latest trends. They did all this not to become human, not to aspire to human ideals or goals, but to perfect their disguise. With the passing of time, the masks became more real, the acting more believable. All in the name of survival.
But occasionally a mask slipped. A smoke screen dissipated. A house of cards toppled. Sometimes reality stood cold and naked for all to see. At such times, humans invariably died.
Ric didn’t care for humans any more than any other vampire. Accidents happened. It was a fact of life . . . and death. Youth. Carelessness. Bloodlust. The beast. The play was the thing, but sometimes the play went wrong, and when it did, scenery got trampled.
Such things only mattered to Ric, or to any Overlord, if the resulting human death put either an individual vampire or the community as a whole at risk. At such times the one responsible received a correction. Not a sanction, no—that was reserved for the true sin—violence against one’s brother. Feuds and power plays were not accidents, but acts of intent, and when directed at their own kind could not be forgiven by a slap on the hand.
So the death of a mortal in itself was not a concern. Guiding the wayward offender, keeping a close eye, and offering ready counsel—that was usually all it took. Sometimes, though, a stronger correction was needed. Ric would wait and see. In any case, his responsibility was to himself and his six new wards, not the humans.
Lying to the sheriff would indeed be easy. Ric had no doubt about where his loyalty lay.
IT WAS TEN O’CLOCK in the morning, a perfect seventy-five degrees with not a single cloud to mar the perfection of the blue sky, and Shelby Cort was in a foul mood. She had managed to steal two hours of sleep at home before returning to her office, and while she was thankful she had scored any shut-eye at all, it hadn’t been nearly enough. She had had a mountain of reports to write, seemingly countless phone calls from media types as far away as Grand Rapids to juggle, teletypes to send out, and a follow-up investigation to coordinate. She had put in three calls to Dr. De Chaux and had gotten nothing but voice mail and his answering machine. She had called Judson Tuxbridge of Tuxbridge Construction and Tom Weldon of Weldon Pump and Well Service, the two companies that had done work recently at the Luslow house, and had had to leave messages for them as well. Were she and the reporters the only people in Shadow Bay awake at ten in the morning?
Her phone rang. She sighed and reached for the receiver, hoping against hope it was one of the calls she was expecting, not another journalist.
“Sheriff Cort.”
“Sheriff, it’s Ric. I’ve got some information for you.”
She was glad to finally hear from him but was far from ready to be on a first name basis with this man. “Doctor. Can you come by my office?”
“Be there in five minutes.”
Shelby was surprised when he indeed arrived a scant five minutes later. It was refreshing to have a man around who could be taken at his word. “Come on in, Doctor, and have a seat. Coffee?”
He managed to mold himself gracefully to the small plastic chair. “No, thanks.”
She was surprised again. “You sure? Anyone else I know who’d been up all night would be drowning in the stuff by now.”
He smiled. “I’m used to being up late. I’m something of a night owl.”
She gave him the once-over, trying not to stare too blatantly. He did look annoyingly good for someone who had been without sleep. He wore neat khaki trousers, a pale-blue knit shirt that his lean, muscled body filled to perfection, and tan gloves. The lenses of his glasses were even darker than they had been the night before, making it obvious the glasses were the self-darkening type. She had the perverse hope that behind the gray lenses were circles and bags every bit as dark and puffy as hers. His hair was long, straight, and neatly tied at the nape of his neck. It was a deceptive color, and Shelby wasn’t sure if she’d call it light brown or dark blond. If his eyes had been that color, she would have called them hazel, an illusory combination of brown, gold, and gray. But while the hair looked like it belonged on a California beach, his skin looked just as pale in the daylight as it had at night. For the first time, though, she noticed a pit in his left cheek, just above his mouth. She supposed it was really a dimple, but she didn’t feel like being generous. Other than that, his face was smooth and his mouth well-defined and full, but the flawlessness only made Shelby that much more aware of her own far-from-fresh freckled face.
“Lucky you,” she said with as much dryness as she could muster. “You have a death certificate?”
The fingers of his right hand tapped silently against her desktop. She stared at the long, slender fingers. The gloves looked to be of a soft, supple leather and fit his hands as snugly as a pair of latex gloves. “No. I haven’t quite finished the autopsy, so I can’t put my signature on it yet. But I can give you a cause of death. Blunt force head trauma. Your mechanism is subdural hematoma and your manner of death, I think it’s safe to say, is homicide.”
At least there were no big surprises there. “And the victim?”
“Well, on the plus side there was no animal predation, and your weather’s been fairly dry. On the negative side is the summer heat. Anyway, it’s pretty much what I told you last night. Caucasian male, five foot seven, brown hair, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Give me a little time, and I’ll have his age calculated to within a year. I put the time of death at three weeks ago, give or take. The body’s a little beyond getting good fingerprints, but I might be able to get a partial for you. He’s had his share of dental work, though, so dental records should nail it if you get a possible match.”
The doctor’s cell phone rang. Better his than mine, she thought. She was tired of answering the phone. If the doctor was likewise fed up with ringing phones, he gave no indication, deftly unclipping his phone from his belt. “Excuse me, Sheriff.” He put the phone to his ear. “De Chaux.” There was a pause of only several seconds. “Yeah, listen, I’m with the sheriff now. I’ll have to call you back.” A handful of heartbeats passed, accompanied by an almost imperceptible twitch of his mouth.
Shelby would have given much to have been able to see his eyes.
The tail of one dark brow lifted above the top rim of his glasses. He spoke into the phone again. “Really. Do you know why?”
She studied his face as he listened—the perfect opportunity to stare without seeming rude—but there was no further change of expression that she could see.
“Go ahead then. I’m curious as well. I’ll call you soon.” De Chaux disconnected the call. “Sorry.”
She smiled. “Hey, no apology needed. I’m sure you’ve been every bit as busy as I have the past twelve hours.”
Her own phone rang, and she raised her hands as an acknowledgment of her statement. She picked it up. “Sheriff Cort.” She bent her head, concentrating on the call. “Mr. Tuxbridge, thanks for returning my call.” Finally. “Can you meet me at my office in, say, half an hour? It’s about an incident that happened last night at the Luslow place on Salt Lick Road.” She glanced up at the doctor’s face again. A small smile twisted the left side of his mouth, and the movement exposed a hidden smile line that joined the dimple. What did he find amusing? “Yeah, if you can, bring your records from the roofing job at the Luslows’. Thanks. ’Bye.”
She replaced the receiver. “That was Judson Tuxbridge. He runs a local construction company. He did some roofing work at the Luslow house not too long ago. It’s a long shot, but I’ll have to find out if he did the job by himself, and if so, if he saw anything. If he had a crew with him, I’ll have to interview them as well.”
De Chaux nodded. “You have the report on that previous privy find?”
“Oh, yeah.” She reached for a folder across her desk and handed it to the doctor. “Here’s a copy of the reports.”
“I assume your previous ME sent the bones to Lansing and then on to Washington?”
“I think so. I can check if you really need to know.”
He opened the folder and glanced quickly at the top page. “Don’t bother just yet. I’m sure there’s no connection.” He shut the folder and looked up at her. “Listen, I’ll bet you haven’t even had breakfast. What do you say we go out for something? At the very least you can get some real coffee.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have the time.”
“Come on. You can get some sustenance, and we can talk.”
Shelby took a deep breath. It would be nice to get out of the office and away from the phones for a little while. And maybe, just maybe, she could worm some personal information out of Doc French. “Okay. Just a half hour, though. I have to be back for Judson Tuxbridge.”
She stopped briefly at her office assistant’s desk. “Seline, I’m going to grab a bite across the street. If Judson Tuxbridge arrives before I get back, just have him wait.”
“Sure, Sheriff.” Seline’s hooded eyes showed off more of her silver eye shadow than Shelby cared to see. Jason Rody had nicknamed her “Surly Seline the Goth Queen.” Shelby had admonished Rody when he used the slur in her presence, but she had to admit that Seline invited that nickname and worse with her garish eye shadow, white pancake makeup, and dark nail polish.
They walked to the diner across the street. It was a favorite with her deputies and the other personnel who worked at the county building. They took a booth, and De Chaux waited while she sat down. Dropped like a rock is more like it, she thought. With an exhaustion that seeped all the way to her knee joints, she plopped onto her seat and listened to the soft whoosh of escaping air that accompanied the quick deflating of the bench’s cushion. Even though she figured he outweighed her by a good eighty pounds, he slid noiselessly and effortlessly into the booth, like a tongue and groove joint that was made to fit perfectly together. She ordered eggs, bacon, toast, and coffee. It wasn’t the healthiest breakfast, but she didn’t care. She had too many things on her mind to worry about calories, cholesterol, and caffeine, and not even the thought of the redoubtable doctor ordering fresh fruit and yogurt and lowering his glasses to cast an accusing eye at her greasy platter made her think twice. She was actually surprised when the doctor shook his head in response to the waitress’s offer to take his order.
She raised her brows. “You’re not going to have anything?”
“I had a bite just before coming to your office.”
She tried to don her best professional interview face—interested but not too friendly, relaxed but alert. De Chaux didn’t slouch against the padded back of the bench, but sat with a slight forward lean, his elbows balanced on the edge of the table and his leather-encased fingers steepled before his face. He didn’t look tired or even uncomfortable, more like an attorney waiting in a courtroom, or like a big cat coiled and lying in ambush for its prey. Weren’t the two one and the same?
She drew a deep breath and smiled. Okay. Question number one. “Are you a forensic pathologist?”
He nodded.
It wasn’t much of an answer, but it gave her the opening she wanted. “You look too young to be a medical examiner, much less a forensic pathologist.”
He cocked his head. “I’m a little older than I look.”
She forged straight ahead. “You can’t be that old. So why is a young guy like you working in a little town like Shadow Bay instead of the big city?”
“Money isn’t important to me.”
“So what is?”
He didn’t answer right away, and again the hesitation gave her a chance to study him. She couldn’t see where his eyes were focused, but she knew it was a spot far beyond her or the diner’s window. He lowered his hands, and the fingers of his right hand beat a silent rhythm against the table.
“I guess I want to steer my own ship, even if it’s just a rowboat and not an ocean liner.”
The movement of his fingers fascinated her, and she wondered why he wore the gloves indoors. “Ah, I see. You don’t want somebody at a hospital or clinic telling you what to do.”
Something flickered behind the lenses, and she got the impression he was now looking right at her. “Something like that.”
She hated dark glasses. She wanted nothing more than to rip those wire rims right off his face. “Why the dark glasses? How can you see with those at night?”
“My eyes are sensitive to the light. I don’t have a problem seeing at night.”
“Is that why you don’t have a tan? You stay out of the light?”
Her food arrived, and he merely nodded in response to her question. She felt a little strange eating when he wasn’t so much as drinking coffee, but her hunger eclipsed her discomfort. Soon she was relishing not only the food, but the feeling that she was indulging while he was not. They were both silent for a few moments while she tackled her eggs.
She tried something new to get him to open up. “One of my deputies tells me your bike is an antique Peugeot.”
“That’s right, if you can call 1956 ‘antique.’ It’s a hobby of mine. Are you interested in bikes?”
“Not really. I’m from Milwaukee. If it isn’t a Harley, it’s foreign to me.”
“Well, my bike is hardly a Harley. It’s just a bread and butter machine—simple on maintenance, light, manageable, and handy around a small town like this.”
She chewed on a bacon strip. “Funny. Somehow I would have pictured you on something . . . bigger.”
She saw a brow peek over the top rim of his glasses in an acknowledgment of her mistaken expectation. She would indeed have to be careful in making assumptions about the doctor. She washed down a bite of toast with the last of her coffee. What did it matter anyway? She had already decided last night that she didn’t want to get involved with him, and nothing had happened today to change her mind.
“Where are you from, Doc? You’re not a born and bred Michigander any more than I am.”
He smiled generously.
She smiled back. If he was going to acknowledge her errors, the least he could do was admit when she was right.
He did. “I was born in Paris, actually, but I’ve been an American citizen for a long time. I moved here from Eidolon Lake in the Upper Peninsula.”
She laughed. “You don’t look or sound anything like a Yooper.” She never could keep a straight face when she used the local slang for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—U.P.—natives.
A small smile was his only answer—modest if he thought it was a compliment, diplomatic if he thought it was a subtle insult to his former neighbors.
“What made you move down here?”
A casual shrug told her before he even opened his mouth that he wasn’t going to answer her question. “I needed a change. What about you? What brought you here?”
She took a deep breath. “My uncle lived here his whole life. He was sheriff for a long time. When I decided to move here, he suggested I follow in his footsteps, and when I agreed, he campaigned heavily for me. It was because of him and what he had meant to the community that I got elected.” She looked down at her empty plate. Both smiles and tears always seemed to come when she thought about Uncle Barry, and she didn’t really care to have the doctor see her all teary-eyed. “He passed away last year. I miss him a lot.”
“I’m sorry.”
His soft voice was an invitation to look at his face, but she resisted, glancing at her watch instead. “And I need to get back.” Appointment or no appointment, she was ready to leave. Somehow he had wheedled more information out of her than she had out of
him, and the feeling was disquieting.
She paid her bill, and in five minutes they were back at the county building. A pickup truck with “Tuxbridge Construction” painted on the side sat in the parking lot.
“Looks like my appointment’s already here,” she said. She was glad, for more than one reason. She could hopefully make some progress on the investigation, but more than that, it was a good excuse for cutting short her time with the doctor. Shelby couldn’t nail it down, but he made her feel decidedly strange. Uncomfortable. It wasn’t dislike, per se. He wasn’t arrogant or annoying or in possession of what her grandmother used to call a “cornstarchy air.” It was an indefinable kind of discomfort that preyed upon her senses and her nerves like a current of cold air on a warm day, or a brush on the shoulder when no one else was near. It was an awareness that something wasn’t normal. “You’ll get back to me as soon as you’re done with the autopsy? I’ll need a copy of the death certificate.”
“Of course. It should be later today. Tomorrow morning at the latest.” The doctor stopped behind Judson’s truck, one muscled arm possessively grasping the tailgate as though the vehicle were his. He was as still as a portion of the landscape, and if the sun was bothering him in any way, he made no show of it, not even bothering to push the lowered glasses higher on his nose.
Shelby shivered, and she hoped she wasn’t coming down with a fever and chills in the middle of a homicide investigation. She turned and headed for the entrance. “Okay. I’ll talk to you later, then,” she threw over her shoulder. The doctor, still braced against the truck, waved in response with his free hand.
Shelby wasted no time in turning her mind to Judson Tuxbridge. Hopefully he’d be able to provide her with some helpful information, and, if not, an interview with one of Shadow Bay’s most handsome and eligible young bachelors couldn’t be all bad.
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