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When Blood Calls

Page 5

by J. K. Beck


  He slipped into his suit coat and they followed Porter out into the hall. But when he turned back toward the reception area, Bosch led Sara further into the bowels of the building, moving through doors, striding down crowded hallways, and finally stopping outside a room labeled Interview A. "Porter didn't have the chance to explain my job in much detail," she said.

  "Your job's exactly the same," Bosch said. "It's only the rules that have changed."

  "The rules?"

  He opened the door and they stepped into an anteroom, completely empty. The walls were concrete, painted a dull gray, with one exception--the far wall featured a window of opaque black glass beside a heavy steel door. A control panel was mounted between the door and the glass.

  "Normally, I'd give you a little more time to take it in. To get your bearings. But I want you in at the ground floor of this case."

  "That's what Mr. Porter said." She looked toward the closed door, imagining the defendant waiting beyond it.

  "Right now, the shorthand version. Division 6 is the cover story for one arm of an ancient organization we now call the Preternatural Enforcement Coalition. The PEC's been functional in some form or other almost since the dawn of civilization, though I'll admit it's become more bureaucratic of late. We have one purpose: to bring those of our kind who would do evil to justice."

  "But?"

  "You could say that we are a self-regulatory agency. We do not operate under the laws of humans. We operate under the Covenant, a series of laws created and modified over millennia."

  "And these laws have jurisdiction over whom? Werewolves? Vampires? All the spooky things Porter mentioned when we were in the elevator?"

  "The Shadow creatures. Exactly."

  "Okay." She licked her lips, forcing herself to look at this like any job, any problem. "But I'm human. Doesn't that matter?"

  "No, though humans are rare among our ranks. We only offer positions to the best 35

  and the brightest. Humans we have determined to be psychologically capable of moving into this world."

  "Oh." She looked at him. "Are you human?"

  "No."

  She nodded, desperately wanting to ask what he was, but fearing that would cross some sort of prosecutor-boss etiquette line.

  "You said it's a new case?"

  "New, and high profile. The enforcement wing apprehended the defendant this morning. He's finished processing and is waiting for us. I don't expect you to participate today, but I do want you here for the preliminary interview."

  "What's the charge?"

  "Murder. He killed a retired judge. One of our judges."

  "What was the murder weapon?"

  "The defendant was the weapon," Bosch said as he pushed one of the buttons on the control panel. "He can't see us," Bosch said. "One-way glass." As he spoke, the glass shifted from opaque black to transparent, revealing the interior of the interrogation room. Sara stifled a gasp, carefully schooling her face into absolutely no reaction at all.

  Not that Bosch was watching her. He was staring at the defendant. He was staring at Luke. At the man whose hands had brought her skin to life. The man whose tongue had laved her. Whose cock had filled her. Whose urgent thrusts had left her moaning and begging for more.

  The man who'd shared her disgust when she'd outlined Stemmons's crimes, and who'd helped celebrate her victory when she'd shared the jury's verdict. The man who'd left a bundle of tulips on her doorstep. Who'd filled her thoughts and eased her dreams.

  The man now sitting there accused of murder.

  "Sara? You okay? I know it's a lot to take in."

  She cleared her throat, remembering the gentle way his fingers had caressed her neck. "You said the defendant was the weapon? What exactly did you mean by that?"

  "Pretty standard stuff in this division," Bosch said. "Lucius Dragos is a vampire." 36

  Chapter 6

  She had no time to process, no time to realign her reality with this new perception of the world. Luke was a vampire. Luke was a murderer.

  A vicious, cold-blooded killer. The very epitome of the evil she'd dedicated her life to putting behind bars.

  There had to be some sort of mistake.

  And he wasn't simply a murderer. No, he was also an in-your-face, straight-outof-your-nightmares vampire. It was outrageous. Unbelievable. Mortifying.

  He'd had his hands on her. He'd touched her--he'd claimed her--and surely, surely she would have known if she'd been sleeping with a killer.

  She remembered, though, the strength in those powerful hands and the determination in his amber eyes. She'd seen control there along with an undercurrent of violence that had both scared and excited her. He'd practically thrummed with a potency and raw carnality that had wreaked havoc on her. She'd wanted him, yes, but he'd wanted her, too, and he was a man who took what he wanted.

  He'd taken her, leading her to where he wanted her to go and then watching with unabashed rapture as she'd shattered under his touch. He was dangerous, all right. She'd seen it, and she'd simply ignored it. In his arms, she'd felt no risk. The opposite, actually, because he'd made her feel more secure than she ever had in her life. Clearly, she'd been a fool.

  "Constantine? Do you need a minute?"

  She tilted her face up, caught her own reflection in the glass as she did. She'd gone slightly pale, but there was nothing in her face that gave away her secret. Nothing that would reveal that she'd been thrown.

  It was the face of a trial attorney, and a damn good one. A prosecutor who could get the shit kicked out of her by a witness in front of twelve citizens good and true and make it look like the witness said the exact right thing to put the final nail in the defendant's coffin. It was, she realized, the face that had gotten her this job.

  "I'm fine," she said, meeting Bosch's eyes. "Let's go hear what Mr. Dragos has to say for himself."

  If Bosch could see her surprise, he didn't show it. Under the circumstances, she supposed he would assume she was tossed a bit off balance by the fact that she was about to come face-to-face with a vampire. Bosch, of course, had no way of knowing that she'd been significantly closer to Dragos than arm's length. And, yes, she needed to tell him about that little conflict of interest. For that matter, she considered stopping him as his fingers tapped out a code on the control panel. She shouldn't be working this case. Not with the baggage she was going to be lugging into that room. Except she said nothing, determined instead to walk into the interview room and face a defendant she'd slept with not forty-eight hours before. Not because it was allowed, and not because justice demanded it. But because she needed to see firsthand the 37

  kind of monster who had taken her body and toyed with her heart. The killer who'd gotten under her skin.

  An electronic beep signaled that Bosch had entered the correct code, and a green light flared above the door. Sara took a step forward, anticipating, but Bosch didn't open the door. Instead, he pulled a sheaf of paper from a folder and handed it to her. "Initial report. I'll be handling this round of questioning, but don't feel you're locked in the role of observer. You want information, you ask."

  "Thank you," she said, though she didn't intend to accept the invitation. This round, she would be content to watch and learn.

  She flipped through the pages, her gaze skimming over Luke's picture along with his vital statistics. Height, six foot five. Weight, 220. Both stats that jibed with what she knew of the man. The next statistic, however, had her mouth going suddenly dry: born in Italy in the year 122. Apparently she'd been a few years off when she'd guessed that the man she'd taken back to her apartment was five years her senior. The report indicated no prior arrests, but the lead detective, Ryan Doyle, had methodically itemized the homicides worldwide in which Luke's name had been thrown in as a suspect. The list was enough to make her stomach turn despite the fact that each of the investigations had been marked as closed, and Luke had ultimately not been implicated.

  The slight queasiness shifted to downright dread as she turn
ed to Doyle's summary of the crime scene. The killer had violently punctured the victim's throat in two places, leaving his exsanguinated body to molder in MacArthur Park. She swallowed, trying to hold her own memories at bay. His throat. His dead eyes. Her terrified scream. And the coppery scent of his blood smearing her hands as she'd held him close and begged her daddy to please, please, please wake up.

  Dear God. Dear God, no.

  She drew in a shaky breath, her hands tightening on the pages as she tried to shut off the flood of images. Her knees weakened, and since she feared that she would fall, she gripped the pages tighter still, forcing herself to focus on Braddock and Luke and the evidence in this murder, not a chillingly similar one that she had witnessed more than twenty years ago.

  "Turn the page, Constantine," Bosch said. His voice was firm, businesslike, but she thought she detected a hint of compassion under the professional veneer. He would know, of course. The county ran extensive background checks on all prosecutors. Her father's murder was part of her file. And if the county knew, then surely Division 6 did as well.

  Rather than comfort her, though, his compassion shamed her. It shouldn't show. Her emotions shouldn't spill out into work like this, and her past should never interfere.

  "Sir, I'm fine."

  "Turn the page."

  She did, her mouth going dry as she turned to an eight-by-ten glossy photograph.

  "Meet Marcus Braddock," Bosch said. "Our victim." The photographer had used a flash, making the colors pop, primarily red and white. The pale white of the victim's bloodless skin contrasted sharply with the fiery red bloom where the neck had been brutally punctured.

  "Anyone familiar with a vampire's bite would recognize this murder for what it 38

  is," Bosch said kindly. As he spoke, the chill of cold certainty ripped through her. She'd suspected it when she'd skimmed the text of the file, but she hadn't given voice to it until the vivid colors of reality had reached out and grabbed her-- her father had been murdered by a vampire.

  She swallowed, working to hold it together despite the one-two punch to her gut that was Luke and then her father.

  Suck it up, Constantine.

  Aware that Bosch had to be watching her, judging her, she focused on the photograph, examining it not as a daughter mourning a lost father, but as a prosecutor seeking justice for a murdered victim.

  As murders went, it was brutal, but not more brutal than some Sara had seen. Stemmons, the serial killer she had so recently put away, had been particularly fond of cutting thin slices into his adolescent victims and letting them bleed out slowly and painfully.

  Sara, however, had not slept with Stemmons mere days before his apprehension, and the fact that she had slept with the man who had ripped into Marcus Braddock's throat made her stomach turn, and she breathed softly through her mouth, trying to quell a rising bout of nausea.

  "Something on your mind, Constantine?"

  She squared her shoulders and slammed a mental door on her intruding memories. Of her father. Of Luke.

  And of a vampire named Jacob Crouch who'd killed her father, then gotten away with murder.

  She could do that, she told herself. She could close it off. Block it away. All of it. She could do it, she knew, because in the end, this was the job she lived for.

  "I'm fine, sir," she said, determined that she would be. To steady herself, she skimmed the information about the victim, learning that although he appeared human, he was actually something else entirely.

  "A Therian," Bosch said in response to her question. "A shape-shifter. In this case, a were-fox. Considered a para-human for purposes of the Covenant, and violence against a human is the most egregious of crimes."

  Which meant that Luke was facing the death penalty. She flipped briskly to the next page of the report, then frowned when she found no reference to a confession. "Sir," she said, making him pause as his hand closed around the door handle. "Earlier you said that the suspect killed the victim."

  "I did."

  "He left a signet ring behind, but other than that ..." She trailed off, her voice rising in question. She hoped that the question sounded merely academic and didn't reveal the wellspring of hope that had bubbled up inside her. A tiny, unprofessional voice that had whispered the possibility that this was all a mistake and that Luke was innocent. That he hadn't done this horrible, unforgivable thing.

  "Your point, Constantine?"

  She swallowed and told herself that this wasn't personal. It was the job, and she would be asking the same questions even if she'd never seen Lucius Dragos before in her life. "A question of semantics. There's nothing in this paperwork to indicate that the suspect has confessed, and yet you flat-out stated that the suspect killed the victim." She 39

  licked her lips. "I was simply wondering why that was. Sir." Bosch's mouth worked, and Sara couldn't tell if it was with humor or with irritation. After a moment, he answered briskly. "Two reasons. First, we're not constrained by the rules that you're used to upstairs. Due process has a different meaning down here. You'll get used to it. Or you won't, and you'll be requesting a transfer back to Porter's office. That would be a shame, but we'll cross that bridge if we come to it." Sara swallowed, convinced by the heat in her cheeks that Bosch could see her mortification.

  "And second, we have the defendant dead to rights." Despite the lingering sting of the verbal hand slap, Sara bit back a guffaw. "With a signet ring?"

  "With a witness," Bosch said, the words killing her hope as effectively as a knife to the heart.

  "A witness?" She flipped through the report, looking for something to back up his statement, both frustrated and relieved when she found nothing. "There's no mention in the file of a witness."

  "Agent Doyle's in the process of preparing a formal affidavit regarding the final image that registered on the victim's conscious mind."

  "He's--I'm sorry. What?"

  "Not the kind of investigative methods you're familiar with, I know. But I assure you that Agent Doyle's skill is not only legitimate, but an enormous asset to this department."

  "No kidding," Sara said, still trying to wrap her head around what the investigator could do. "So he just looks into the minds of the dead?"

  "Not exactly. If the conditions are right, he has the ability to experience a victim's last emotional moments, and see through the victim's eyes at the moment of death."

  "If conditions are right," Sara repeated. "And in this case?"

  "They were dead-on perfect. He's our man, Constantine." Something cold and empty settled over her. It was true, then. She'd slept with a murderer. Sex alone she could handle. She wouldn't like it, but she could handle it. But with Luke it had been more than sex. She recalled the warm tingle that had spread through her like the buzz of fine wine when she'd found the tulips on her doorstep. She'd been gloriously happy, awash with possibilities and the eager excitement of a girl starting a new relationship. Now all of that was shattered. And the worst of it was, she'd never seen it coming.

  Bosch looked her up and down, and she worked hard to keep her raging emotions from showing on her face. "Call him the accused if it makes you do your job better, but don't forget what he is and what he did."

  "I won't, sir. Believe me." Her mortification faded slowly, replaced by a steady, burning anger. "I understand what he is. I apologize. I spoke out of turn."

  "Are you under the impression I'm annoyed with you?" She managed a half-smile and didn't voice the very definitive yes that screamed for release.

  Apparently she didn't need to. Bosch could clearly see her answer on her face.

  "You're here because you're quick and you're bright and you ask the right questions. Stop now and I will be annoyed. Now, can we go in, or shall we address the differences in 40

  fashion for prisoners here and upstairs? Personally, I find the orange jumpsuits L.A. County issues to be rather repulsive."

  "Agreed. And, yes. We can go in."

  The green light above the door had default
ed back to red, so Bosch reentered the code, then gave the door a tug and stepped inside, holding it open for her to follow. She stepped smartly through the door, her head high, her heels clicking firmly on the cement floor.

  He looked up as she entered, and she saw it immediately. That spark of recognition. That quick shadow in his eyes that suggested that his world was tilting along with hers.

  She, at least, wasn't locked up.

  Not that Luke had the appearance of a prisoner. True, he wore a faded gray Tshirt with "Detention C" stamped across the chest in black letters, but there was nothing about him that seemed bound. On the contrary, walking into that room felt much the same as walking into a conference room, with Luke at the head of the table, slowly surveying those summoned to do his bidding.

  Beside her, Bosch's gaze shifted between the two of them, his eyes dull and unreadable. Then he pressed a hand to her back, easing her forward to one of the two chairs on the opposite side of Luke. If he knew that anything other than a murder investigation was taking place in that room, he didn't show it. Sara was determined not to show it, either.

  She pulled out the chair and sat, then took a yellow pad from her briefcase and placed it efficiently on the table in front of her. The investigator's report was tucked underneath, just enough of the page revealed under the pad to signal to Luke that she'd read the report and she knew what he'd done. She kept her pen in her hand, idly twirling it in her fingers as she watched Luke's face. Other than that first flicker of recognition, however, he revealed nothing.

  "Lucius Dragos," Bosch said, taking the chair beside Sara. "It's not often I have the chance to sit across from a man with such a notorious reputation."

  "Notorious?" Luke repeated, his mouth curving down into a frown. "I didn't know you listened to gossip, Nostramo."

  The easy use of Bosch's first name surprised Sara, and she glanced at her new boss, anticipating his reaction. None, however, was forthcoming. Instead, he merely flipped through the papers in his hand. "Belfast, last month," Bosch said. "A werewolf dead in Glencairn Park. Nasty business."

  "Wasn't it, though," Luke said, leaning back in his chair, utterly calm in the face of Bosch's accusation. "Turns out Division 3 suspected that same werewolf in the killing of a human politician not three days after being released from PEC custody." He shook his head. "I had a pint with the lead investigator. Not only was I not charged, but the bloke picked up the tab for my Guinness."

 

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