Tainted Blood: A Generation V Novel

by M. L. Brennan

  Normally Suze would’ve picked the lock on Peter’s door, but as we stood in the hallway of the building’s ninth floor, with the light above us flickering ominously and what looked like fossilized vomit on the carpet, it was clear that her services were unnecessary—the lock was already broken. I pushed the door open and walked in, followed by Gil (who had finally stopped talking after Suze had openly threatened him while we walked up the stairs—naturally, the elevator was broken), then Suze, who was shadowing the bear’s every movement.

  It was a typical efficiency apartment—bed, bureau, and desk in the main room, doors leading into the tiny kitchen and the tinier bathroom. The single window had a bath towel tacked to it to make up for the lack of curtains. It also looked like a bomb had exploded—every drawer had been yanked out of the dresser and dumped onto the floor, and papers were thrown everywhere. The computer keyboard, mouse, and monitor were resting neatly on his desk, but the plugs had been yanked out and the hard drive removed. There was the usual assortment of college-guy posters on the walls, but there were several noticeable blank spots where something had been removed. On a few spots that remover had been in such a hurry that the corners of the picture still remained, with the rest torn away.

  “Someone was already here,” I noted, a second later kicking myself for becoming Captain Obvious. There was a weirdly strong smell hanging in the air, and not the usual one I would’ve expected for a college guy’s apartment. “And that someone brought bleach.” I looked over at Suze. “Is there any way you can still—”

  Never taking her eyes off Gil, who was staring around the room and looking distinctly taken aback, or was just admiring his own handiwork, she shook her head. “I can’t get a scent, Fort. Not once bleach gets thrown around.”

  “Shit.” I looked around and nudged a pile of paper. “Whoever did this must’ve grabbed anything incriminating.”

  “You don’t know that,” Gil said sharply, giving me that very familiar glare. He knelt down and started sorting through a pile of papers. “The killer was probably in a hurry, and they could’ve missed something that will prove to you that my sister is innocent.”

  As he turned his attention to the papers, I exchanged a glance with Suze. She gave a little shrug and said, “Well, we did drive all the way over here.”

  “All right.” I turned and looked at the demolished room. “Now, if I were a nineteen-year-old guy, and I had something incriminating to hide, where would I put it?”

  Of course, I had once been a nineteen-year-old guy in crappy student apartments (my current apartment, while still moderately crappy, was still a cut above the cesspools that students lived in), so all I had to do was remember where I had stashed my treasures. I went straight for the closet, and started shaking out all of the shoes, then dug my hands into the pockets of all of his jackets. I found a very nice watch, probably a graduation gift from his parents, but nothing incriminating. I looked around the room again and saw the pile of books against the side of his desk. Gil was still picking away at the papers, with Suze focusing on emulating upper management and not doing anything but watching. I grabbed the top book on the stack and flipped through it. Nothing. Next one, again nothing. I was halfway through the stack when I hit pay dirt in his copy of An Introduction to Literary Criticism. It was a photo, and I stared at it for a long second.

  “Guys,” I said, with enough intensity that Gil and Suze both turned around. I handed the picture silently to Suze. Her eyebrows lifted slowly, and she gave a low whistle as she looked at what I’d seen—there was poor, awkward, acne-ridden Peter lying on his bed. And snuggled up next to him was the beautiful blond Carmen, with a very sly smile on her face.

  Gil looked over Suze’s shoulder and gaped. “Carmen and Peter weren’t dating,” he said, staring at the photo as if he couldn’t quite process the information it was conveying because it just didn’t add up—like two and two suddenly equaling twelve. “She’s always chasing some of the older boys—metsän kunigas in their twenties. She told me once that Peter had a puppy crush on her.”

  While Gil was trying to wrap his head around things, I pulled the next book off the stack—Ivanhoe. Apparently Peter had been a literature student, because I found another picture. This was quite a bit more explicit—it was just Carmen on the bed, and she was completely naked. “Looks like someone found that crush useful,” I said, and passed the photo over. I stared at Gil, realizing that the whole time he’d been defending his sister, he’d been absolutely sincere. Meanwhile, there had been Carmen, just hanging around the edges, so willing to tell me all about how Matias had killed Dahlia’s husband, or, Jesus, even making me promise to bring Prudence into the investigation if things stalled out.

  Suze was clearly thinking the same thing. “Carmen was working on this from the beginning, and she figured out how to get Peter to help her out. She tried to pin it all on Dahlia, and she waited until she thought that she’d be dealing with Prudence rather than Chivalry.”

  “She got Peter to attack us, maybe to kill us, or maybe just kill you and maim the hell out of me and plant the evidence, who knows, but that definitely would’ve brought Prudence up here in a killing mood.” I looked at Gil. “But she was just focusing on Dahlia—why is that, Gil? Why didn’t she try to frame you for anything?”

  Gil was still staring at the photos of his cousin, shaking his head. When I said his name, he jerked a little, and finally looked up at me, horrified. “Uncle Matias tapped Dahlia as his successor at the end of last month. I knew that he didn’t agree with my opinions, and that Chivalry Scott just saw me as another version of my mother, so I knew that I wasn’t going to be named the heir. But my mom asked why he wasn’t considering Carmen at all—she’s young, but she’s twenty-one now. But Matias said he didn’t want to go into it, but that she didn’t have the temperament.”

  “I’ve heard that phrase a lot in these conversations,” I noted. “Now what exactly did he mean by that?”

  Gil coughed, uncomfortable. “When she was five and I was eighteen, I caught her pulling the wings off flies. Stuff like that. She was kind of a creepy little kid.”

  “Great, a budding sociopath,” Suze said. “Now what exactly was done about it?”

  “I told my aunt, and she said that she’d take care of it.”

  Suze’s eyes narrowed. “Would this be Carmen’s dead mother?” Gil nodded, and her voice became suspicious. “And how did she die again?”

  “It was an accident,” Gil said. “She . . .” I could tell the exact moment he thought it through and connected the accident to what was currently going on, because he suddenly looked like he wanted to vomit. “She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. Carmen was the one who found her. But she was just a little kid—she was only six.”

  “We need to find Carmen right now,” I said, and Gil nodded jerkily, still looking locked in shock. “Where would she be?” I pressed, when the bear didn’t automatically answer.

  “Work?” he blinked. “She’s the assistant manager at a bridal boutique downtown. But why would she go to work the day after she killed Peter?”

  “She went to work the day after she murdered her father,” Suze noted. “Apparently she believes in saving her sick days for something important.”

  “Carmen was locking in alibis the whole time,” I said as the realization hit me. “She killed Matias, showered, then put on clean clothes and went out to a party. Slept with some guy, spent the night, then went to work and let someone else find the body.” I mentally kicked myself. Not that I’d even pushed on her alibi—I’d fallen hook, line, and sinker for her innocent routine.

  “But that was planned,” Suze said. “Everything that night, from when she killed him, to the party that was probably already scheduled, to how she’d clean up her part of the scene. This, though”—she nudged one of the dumped drawers with her foot—“this was her having to improvise. Having Peter attack us to plant the clothing was also risky—she exposed an accomplice. Then she dumped him in the
main building—trying to force us to take action.”

  “So we have a sociopath who is getting sloppy and desperate,” I said. That wasn’t a comforting thought. I felt a rush of relief that Gil and Dahlia had shipped the little girls up north. I focused on Gil. “Listen, if you call her at work, maybe have her meet you somewhere by saying that you guys need to talk about Dahlia—”

  The sound of Suze’s phone cut me off, an explosion of techno dance music. She was a fan of personalized ringtones, and I had yet to psych myself into asking her exactly what she’d assigned to my calls. “That’s Taka,” she said, whipping the phone out of her pocket and pressing it to her ear. After an intensive minute, she cursed vehemently. “Go home. Don’t go near a bear until I give you the okay.”

  “What’s going on?” I could feel the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.

  She hung up and shoved the phone back in her pocket. “I asked Taka to keep an eye on the house. She was in fox form when Carmen showed up and went inside. A minute later she came out with Dahlia. Carmen had a gun, so Taka stayed where she was. Carmen forced Dahlia into the car, made her drive off somewhere. Once they were gone, Taka ran down and into the house. The bodyguard is dead, shot at close range, and Taka just called me from the house phone.”

  “Oh my God,” Gil said, then shook his head. “Alison is dead?”

  “Focus, Gil,” I said. “We need to focus on Dahlia. Why would Carmen take her rather than kill her?”

  “She must’ve smelled a trap when we didn’t just kill Dahlia outright.” Suze paced. “So now we’ve got a sociopath who realizes that we know that there was a frame job happening.”

  “But why take Dahlia?” Gil pressed. “And take her where?”

  “Everything Carmen has been doing, she’s been doing to angle herself into the job of karhu,” I said slowly, thinking things through. “Her father must’ve said something to her that made her realize that he was never going to give her the job, so she killed him in a way that would also knock out the other contender for the spot. Now she knows that we don’t suspect Dahlia, so—”

  “It’s me,” Gil burst out. “She’s going to kill Dahlia and try to pin it on me, leaving her as the only possible heir.”

  “But you’re—,” I started to protest.

  “But I’m with you guys. Oh my God,” and he had his phone out and dialing even as he talked, his words running over one another as he tried to spit all of them out. “She’ll use my husband. He’s at home, and if she can somehow make it look like Kevin and I were working together to try to make me karhu—”

  “Car, right now, car,” I said, and we tore out of the room and ran for the stairs.

  “Kevin’s not picking up his phone,” Gil said, terror lining his face as he started taking the stairs three at a time and pulled ahead.

  “Maybe he—”

  “No,” Gil insisted as the two of us started struggling to keep up with him. “Kevin’s a web designer. He answers his phone on the toilet, at two in the morning, at the movies—he never shuts it off. That means Carmen is already there.”

  “But they could be heading anywhere,” Suze protested. I agreed with her, but I was concentrating on breathing as we pounded down nine flights of stairs. “You were with us. She just grabbed Dahlia—she must already have had Kevin stashed somewhere.”

  “No, it’s in our house; it would have to be—she needs to imply that I was involved with the whole thing. She thinks she stripped everything out of Peter’s room that tied him to her—crap, the way you guys were looking at me this whole time, you thought it was me?”

  Hopefully there was a gift basket somewhere that managed to capture that Sorry I suspected you of murder sentiment. If we got through this one, I’d have to look into it. For now, I saved my breath and focused on keeping up with Gil and Suze.

  We emptied into the parking lot and raced to the Audi. I tossed Suze’s keys to her, saying, “We need aggressive driving right now, but don’t kill us. Gil, directions.” I tried to think through Carmen’s actions. “You were with us. That meant that if Kevin works from home, he would be alone. Everyone was calling with the news about Dahlia—Carmen hears that and figures out her plan. She goes to Kevin first, disables him, stashes him at your house. Then she goes to Dahlia’s, kills Alison, grabs Dahlia.” I shuddered. “Gil, for the love of everything holy, just tell me you don’t live two doors down from Dahlia.”

  Fortunately it turned out that Gil didn’t. His distrust of the Ad-hene and dislike of sharing woods with them had apparently been enough motivation that he and Kevin had bought property not in Lincoln, where most of his family lived, but over in the town of Johnston, which pressed up against the Snake Den State Park, the second-largest of Rhode Island’s state parks. This meant that since we were driving from Providence, we were actually closer to Gil’s house than Carmen had been starting from Lincoln. She’d had at least a ten minute head start on us, but between the distance and Suze’s incredible ability to drive with reckless disregard for life and property yet never be noticed by the police, I was able to clench my fists and hope. And looking at Gil, whose husband and sister were both in danger, I noticed a strange shifting and mottling in the flesh of his jaw and neck, as if the shape of his mouth were trying to change into something else. I remembered the jaws on Peter the bear when he’d been charging the Fiesta, and I had another reason to hope very hard that we got there soon—because I did not want to find myself trapped in the car with an enraged bear. Reaching into my laptop bag and bracing myself as Suze took a turn way too fast, I checked to make sure that the Ithaca and the Colt were both fully loaded.

  Gil’s house was a tidy little gray cape that had all the features I’d come to expect from a metsän kunigas property—right on the edge of the woods, with a high fence, and a good-size property in exchange for a smaller house. Suze pulled the car over a few houses down, and we piled out and ran down. There was a small sedan parked in the driveway, and I reached over as we passed it and pressed a hand against the hood—still warm, so Carmen hadn’t beaten us by much.

  The plan had been hashed out in haste on the drive over. Glancing at Gil, whose face was now completely covered in a layer of dense black fur and whose hands were looking extremely pawlike, I hoped like hell that Suze, who was already using her fox tricks to keep any neighbors from noticing that I was openly carrying firearms, was also preventing them from catching a glimpse of him. Frankly, even under the painful pressures of the moment, I kind of wished that she could’ve prevented me from seeing that.

  We crouched under the windows of the living room, and Suze held up three fingers, then counted them down silently. On one, I snagged her under the hips and popped her up long enough for her to take a quick look around the room, then eased her down again. Suze’s fox tricks might’ve been more than enough to keep the neighbors from seeing something that they wouldn’t normally expect to see, but as Suzume had explained to us both in the car, Carmen would be on alert and paranoid. To prevent any bad-luck moments of our ursine sociopath glancing at the window at the exactly wrong instant, it had to be Suze peeking in, using as much of her fox mojo as she could muster to keep any eyes on the inside distracted. As I dropped her down and she shook her head, I noticed a sheen of sweat on her face, even in the cold weather, and I knew that whatever she was working, she was working at it.

  Gil led the way farther into the property. Luckily, unlike Dahlia, he’d settled just for fences on the sides of his property, but not fully ringing it on all sides, so we didn’t have to worry about pulling ourselves over anything. Slipping around to the back of the house, we found a well-maintained porch and a large bay window that looked into the kitchen. This time there was no need to give Suze a boost—we could all see Dahlia. Still wearing the clothing from this morning, but now with a large bruise on her cheek and blood dripping out of her mouth, she was standing rigidly, talking to someone. I craned backward, easing slowly away from the covering angle, and the rest of the tableau spr
ead out in front of me. Kevin was tied to a chair a few feet in front of Dahlia, looking pale and strained, and behind him stood Carmen. She was still smiling that sweet and innocent Swiss Miss smile, looking completely normal in a neat sweater and pair of slacks, her workplace name tag actually pinned on her chest. Meanwhile she was handling a gun with frightening comfort, keeping it trained on Dahlia. She was crouching down a little, then standing back up, and I realized that she was trying to figure out what angle she’d have to fire it from to make it look like Kevin had shot Dahlia. Whatever scenario she had in her head, she was committed to it.

  I leaned over and tugged Gil back until he could see what I did. Suze stayed where she was, squeezing her eyes shut and screwing her face up in concentration, and I knew that she was making sure that if Carmen happened to glance out the window, her eyes would be drawn to the trees, or the fence, and not to me and Gil. With my hand on his back, I could feel a strange fluctuation in the formation of Gil’s spine—from second to second, it went from straight to curved, and I wondered exactly how hard it was right now for him not to just shift and run into that room.

  But he managed it, though the strain was showing on his face. Gil pointed to himself, then the porch. The porch doors were, unsurprisingly in this season, closed, but there were also drapes across them—apparently Carmen had grabbed Kevin before he’d had a chance to open them. This was lucky for us, since that would allow Gil to get as close as possible to an entrance without being spotted, though I knew that Suze would be throwing up some cover.

  While Gil moved into position, I set the Ithaca down carefully on the grass and drew the Colt from my waist holster. I eased it out—Suze had her hands fisted in the ground, and she was actually panting with the effort of keeping all eyes away from me as I carefully aimed the gun at Carmen’s head. I paused, hesitating. I did my due diligence down at the shooting range every week, but I’d never in my life shot through glass, or even expected to shoot through glass. I had no idea what this was going to do to my line of fire, and I was worried about the bullet ricocheting into either Kevin or Dahlia. Even worse, Carmen’s finger was on the trigger of her gun. She had a silencer on her gun, but I didn’t, and the sound of my shot would probably result in her firing automatically—which, given the direction she was holding it in, would go right into Dahlia. And if I missed Carmen completely, then everyone would be at risk.