by Sarah Zettel
Rafe waved his hand. “Sure, sure, sure. Because backdating a report and giving orders to your own lab techs is so difficult.” He paused, and I felt the next shot being leveled. “And of course, if you’d actually found such valuable evidence when you had complete control of the premises, you’d naturally leave it right where it was.”
O’Grady turned back to me. “Ms. Caine, you’d better hope this guy has something better by the time he gets to court. Otherwise you’re going to be working the chow line at Rikers—you and your brother both. As soon as we find him.” The point on Rafe’s pencil snapped. O’Grady’s scary smile—the thin, satisfied one that did not belong on the face of a man who appreciated a good lasagna—slid back into place. “Why, Mr. Wallace, didn’t you know your other client had fled the jurisdiction?”
Rafe met the detective’s gaze and clicked his pencil twice, slowly and deliberately. “We are discussing Ms. Caine, not Mr. Caine.”
“We are discussing a dead man, a bucket of blood, and a missing vampire. And frankly, I’m getting tired of how many items are getting tacked on to this case.”
“What about the other bodies?” asked Rafe quietly.
O’Grady’s smile faded, and Rafe clicked his pencil once more, like he was racking up a point.
“You’re sitting on four other Greenwich Village murders, Detective,” he said. “All of them drained while alive, but none of them bitten. Did you also find their blood in my client’s freezer?”
“What are you playing at, Wallace?”
“Nothing at all, Detective. Only I wonder what the media will think when they find out you’ve been engaged in a cover-up and that you’re trying to railroad the Caines because you’ve been unable to find the real killers.”
I wasn’t sure whether I was in the middle of a high-stakes poker game or a full-fledged Mexican standoff. I just tried to make myself small, as if I could avoid the shrapnel when one of these two exploded.
“Now we’re into the cheap threats?” inquired O’Grady.
But Rafe bent back over his legal pad and started in on his notes again, as if the detective had ceased to be of interest. “I’m just saying there are all kinds of things to take into account here.”
“And I’m sure the district attorney and the judge will be just thrilled to go over them all with you. But none of them make up for the evidence found in your client’s—both your clients’—place of employment.”
“Which also does not explain why she was attacked outside the Post Mortem nightclub.”
“What?”
Now it was Rafe’s turn with the satisfied smile. “My client was attacked by two vampires outside Post Mortem in the West Village.”
“And she didn’t think to report this?”
“An oversight, I’m sure. She’s been very concerned about her brother’s welfare asituation with her restaurant.”
“And I’m supposed to just believe this attack?”
“There were witnesses.”
Anatole. Sometime while I was in here, the sun had set and Rafe Wallace had talked to Anatole. He was the only one who knew about both the attack and the other deaths. No, wait. I’d told Brendan too.
Somehow, I had acquired my own damn cavalry. They ran to my rescue in alleys, escorted me out of vampire-filled theaters, and came to my aid in police effing headquarters. Why did that make me want to shrivel up inside?
Because I took care of other people. Nobody took care of me, and I liked it that way. But it was more than that. It was because no matter which way I looked at it, both Brendan and Anatole could have reasons for helping me that were very different from the ones I thought I knew.
“Things starting to look a little more complicated?” inquired Rafe.
Oh, yeah.
Linus drummed his big fingers on the tabletop. Rafe clicked his pencil. I bit my tongue to keep from yelling at both of them to knock it off.
“Changes nothing,” said O’Grady at last. “We’ve got the blood.”
Rafe shrugged. “Circumstantial evidence, but go spin your wheels if it makes you happy. I need to talk with my client.”
O’Grady got to his feet, but I got no sense of retreat from him. He was heading out that door because he had to. He’d be upstairs, sorting through his folders, until he had a nice neat paper trail leading from me to Dylan Maddox’s blood. My wrists burned where the handcuffs had been and I felt my chin shake as the door closed.
“No need to look like that, Ms. Caine.” Rafe clicked his pencil once more and made another note.
“Why not?”
“Because it is very obvious you are being set up.” My lawyer picked up the other chair, moved it around to my side of the table and sat. Even sitting, he had at least six inches on me. “And Detective O’Grady knows it.”
“He does? ’Cause before you got here, he sure acted like he thought I was doing a Lizzie Borden on the neighborhood.”
“Among his many other talents, Linus O’Grady is a one-man good-cop-bad-cop show. It doesn’t help that he thinks you’re being set up by your brother.”
I was not ready to discuss how many times that same idea had crossed my mind. “What do you think?”
Rafe considered his words carefully, and considered them again. “I’ve represented a lot of nightbloods with something to hide, Ms. Caine. I don’t think your brother has the patience to pull off something like this, especially if you add the other four bodies into the equation.”
“How’d you know about that?”
Rafe touched the side of his nose and pointed toward the mirror.
I sank back into my chair and waited while Rafe went back to his notes, occasionally clicking that pencil. At last he looked up at me.
“I’m going to ask you one more question and I need a straight answer.”
“Okay.” I was pretty sure I knew what was coming, and it gave me a sick feeling in my empty stomach.
“Do you know where your brother is?”
Straight answer. Right. “I wish to God I did.”
Rafe held my gaze for a long moment, clearly waiting to see if I was going to change my mind. I don’t know if what he saw satisfied him, but he didn’t make any notes about it. “If you do hear from him, you have got to convince him to turn himself in. At this point, Linus O’Grady and the holding cell here are about the only things that are going to keep him safe if the Maddoxes decide to get their vigilante on.”
“I know.” Memory of Anatole’s dead white face and shadowed eyes looked down at me. With the young Maddoxes running about the city with their stakes out, I am less than amused about that at the moment.
“I know you think O’Grady’s on the dark side now,” Rafe said. “But I’ve been dealing with the man since the P-Squad was formed. He’s fair and he’s clean. Your brother will be treated right.”
“I believe it. I just . . .” Don’t say it. Don’t say it. “I’m really worried about Chet.” Which was true, as far as it went. I was not going to say out loud that I didn’t even know for sure he was alive. So instead I asked about something Rafe had said to O’Grady.
“What was all that about the mayor’s office?”
“You don’t know?” When I shook my head, Rafe hesitated, but only for a moment. “The Maddoxes—in the form of Maddox Security, LLC headed by one Brendan Maddox—are up for a major city contract to provide magical and paranormal protection services to public buildings and monuments.”
I sat up straight. That explained a lot, including what Brendan couldn’t tell me and Margot’s bribe. A citywide contract—a million dollars would be the budget for coffee and Danish on something like that. How on earth had they kept this off FlashNews? The nightblood community would go ballistic if they found out the city was contracting security out to the Maddoxes.
What if it was Brendan who had given Margot the money for my bribe? But it still didn’t explain why. Why the hell would it be worth a million dollars to any given Maddox to keep me from opening a nightblood-friendly est
ablishment?
“Do you think Detective O’Grady knows about the security contract?”
“I’m sure of it. I haven’t seen Little Linus so mad in . . . forever.”
“Couldn’t be because everybody keeps calling him Little Linus?”
“Actually, no. But it might have a lot to do with a city that underfunds his team and then gets ready to hand millions over to a private contractor.” Rafe tossed his notes and folder into his briefcase. “Hang tough, Ms. Caine. I will get you out of here as soon as humanly possible.” He put a hand on my shoulder and gave me that little reassuring shake. I thought about swatting him away, but couldn’t seem to muster the strength. “Did you say anything to O’Grady before I got here?”
“No.”
“Good. You have the right to remain silent, and I want you to keep using it. Now, from here, they’re going to put you in a holding cell. You’re actually fairly lucky. As a thauma-typical in the paranormal lockup, you should get a spot to yourself.”
“Lucky?” A hysterical laugh threatened, and it had backup. I swallowed hard.
“Trust me, Ms. Caine, you do not want to be locked in be lockee kind of nightbloods who end up here.”
I thought about the other daybloods I had shared my previous city-sponsored accommodations with, and I shuddered. Seeing that I’d gotten the point, Rafe went on. “Hopefully, we will get ourselves a judge with a healthy sense of skepticism, and a reasonable bail. If so, you will be out of here in eight to twelve hours.”
“Bail?” I’d been so wrapped up in sorting through all the things I didn’t know, I hadn’t stopped to think about much of what might actually happen next. “How much are we talking?”
“It depends on what charges O’Grady and the DA think can be made to stick. But don’t worry. You can get a bond. That will mean you only have to put up ten percent of the total.”
My mouth had gone very dry. “I think I’ve got fifty dollars in my checking account.”
That, of course, was exactly the wrong thing to say to a man who charges by the hour. I had an abrupt vision of him shaking my hand, wishing me luck and heading out the door. As it was, a muscle in his cheek twitched and he made another note.
“Well, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
I smiled up into my lawyer’s eyes and tried to project confidence. He didn’t believe me, but I let that go, because honest to God, what else was I going to do?
22
Exhaustion is a useful thing. With my brain and body fully anesthetized by its effects, I was able to fall asleep in the little holding cell, despite the fact that the narrow bunk had a mattress about one inch thick over a solid metal shelf.
When Bored Uniform came and got me for my “desk appearance,” he took me to the bathroom first. He did not, however, let me have a comb, or any of my hairpins. I walked into the courtroom stained and rumpled, with bloodshot eyes and the mother of all bad hair days. If I’d been the judge, I wouldn’t have believed a word I said.
Fortunately, Rafe Wallace wasn’t about to let me do any talking. I stood beside him and kept my mouth shut while he explained how all the circumstances were, well, circumstantial, that I was an upstanding member of the business community, and could not even possibly be considered a flight risk. (Thank God for Elaine and her cameras. He actually pulled out his smartphone to show the judge how I had fed the hungry.) The demonstration of all of this innocence and virtue proved that I should be released on my own recognizance.
The DA, a skinny, faux-redheaded woman who evidently believed that eighties-width shoulder pads were back in style, had a different opinion. She brought up the bucket of blood seven times, and Chet’s disappearance twelve.
After she finally ran out of synonyms for “heinous,” there was a wait while the judge shuffled papers and sucked on a cough drop.
At last the gavel came down. “Seventy-five thousand, cash or bond. Next.”
My basic math is good, especially when dollar signs are involved. Ten percent bond meant I needed seven thousand five hundred dollars to get out of here.
“No contest, Your Honor,” Rafe said.
“I can’t raise that much.” Panic flitted around the edges of my mind. I was going back into that ent, empty, windowless cell and Bored Uniform was going to turn the key. . . .
“It’s taken care of.” Rafe closed his briefcase and herded me toward the edge of the courtroom.
“What? How?” If this was Trish again, I was going to have to leave town. How could I look her in the face after she’d done so much?
Rafe glanced to the back of the courtroom. Premonition prickled the back of my neck as I turned.
Brendan nodded to me from the back row of benches.
I opened my mouth. I closed it again.
“Come on,” said Rafe. “No time to be standing around.”
Fortunately I didn’t have to deal with Brendan right away, because I got heavily involved in another hour of following Rafe around. More papers were exchanged between tired, hard-eyed people both in and out of uniforms. Down at the desk for the holding cells I got my stuff back in a manila envelope: purse, hairpins, cell phone, all the little things I carried around to feel prepared for life on a daily basis. Rafe waited while I counted and sorted. All the while, one question spun around the back of my mind:
How am I ever going to pay Brendan back?
“Now, Chef Caine, there’re some things you need to know,” said Rafe as I slung my purse over my shoulder. “Word of your arrest has gotten out, and we’re going to have reporters waiting when we leave here.”
I should have known. I was sure the thought had passed through my mind at some point during the last—I checked my watch—twelve hours. “How bad?” I asked.
Rafe handed me his smartphone with FlashNews already active.
First headline shone in screaming red: VAMPIRE CHEF HAS BLOOD ON HER HANDS.
It went downhill from there. FlashNews had compiled tons of articles and videos. I saw myself smugly staring up from the thumbnail graphics, looking like I deserved all the puns being applied to the ruin of my life.
CAUGHT RED-HANDED.
BLOODY DISASTER FOR PHILANTHROPIC CHEF.
FANGS, BUT NO FANGS?
I thumbed the screen off. It was gone. Everything I had worked for my whole adult life—family, job, reputation, all of it. All gone.
Rafe took back his cell phone. “Let’s get you out of here.”
“Yeah.” But where could I go? The vulture flock waited on the courthouse steps, cameras, mics and smartphones held high.
“Chef Caine!” they shouted. “Chef Caine!”
“No comment!” Rafe gripped my arm as he shouldered between them.
The way ahead filled with exploding lights and a blur of voices. They shouted questions, but I couldn’t tell one from the other any more than I could see where I was going.
“Chef Caine!”
“Chef Caine!”
“Chef Caine has no comment!” bellowed Rafe.
He was wrong. I had plenty of comments. I just didn’t have the strength to deliver them, and if I had, they’d’ve all been bleeped out on the networks. Which really made me want to open my mouth and give them a taste of what my line cooks got on a Friday night when wee all in the weeds.
Used to get.
“No comment!” Rafe propelled me toward the black town car with tinted windows that waited by the curb. The door opened, and I was folded and pushed into the plush seat. The second the door slammed shut, the driver simultaneously blew the horn and gunned the engine. We squealed away from the clicking, popping, shouting curbside crowd.
“Are you okay?” asked Brendan.
Of course it was Brendan occupying the other half of that plush seat, managing to be spruce, clean, in control and concerned all at the same time.
“For certain minimal values of okay, probably.” I pushed my hair back. I hated everything about myself right then—the way I looked, the way I felt, where I was,
and most of all where I had just been. More than any of that, I hated what I had to say next.
“You were right. I should have gone straight to O’Grady.” One more total screwup by Charlotte Caine to add to the list.
Brendan didn’t say “I told you so,” despite the fact that he’d more than earned the right to. But I’d known he wouldn’t. It was so very much not his style. He was a class act all the way, the kind of customer I’d have been glad to have in my place, when I had a place. He would treat the staff well, enjoy the food for what it was, tip generously, and treat his date with consideration. He probably rescued puppies on the weekends and tutored underprivileged orphans.
Whereas I got arrested and terminally fouled up other people’s lives trying to help.
“It’ll be all right, Charlotte.”
“Chet’s gone missing,” I told him.
“I know.”
“Somebody could have killed him, Brendan. Somebody—”
“I don’t think so.” Brendan cut me off before I could work up more than a small head of hysteria.
“Why not?”
“Because if someone did kidnap Chet, it would be the same people who killed Dylan, and they would want to make sure you knew about it so you would be good and scared of them.”
A thin river of hope trickled into my tired heart. “You sound very sure.”
Brendan opened his hand to show me Chet’s cell lying on his palm.
That thin river swelled into a decent-sized stream. “Did you find anything?”
Secrets gleamed behind Brendan’s blue eyes. “Your brother was trying to set Pam up.”
“Set Pam up? With who?”
His face went blank for a second before comprehension dawned, along with a look that was dangerously close to amusement. “Not that kind of setup. He was trying to pull off a sting operation.”
“What? Are you sure?”
Brendan nodded. “He’s been recording conversations, e-mailing the files to his home computer and then deleting the recordings off the phone.”
“You can tell that?”