Gidion's Blood

by Bill Blume

  The officer in front of him moved closer and lowered the gun once the handcuffs had both his hands hostage. The tall man in his black uniform pressed the transmit button on his shoulder mic and angled it towards his mouth. “Radio, we’ve got one in custody.”

  Only one other thought went through Gidion’s head after that, the single fact that had driven him to scream as the Mustang had disappeared with the assassin.

  He tried to hold onto what details he’d seen about that car, the license plate, and the driver, but all he could see was his grandfather’s blood-covered body on the floor in the dark.

  Grandpa was dead.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The hardest part of the next hours was not being able to talk to Andrea. Police shoved him into the back of a police cruiser and questioned him. Then they moved him to the back of an ambulance and questioned him more. After that, they took him to the emergency room, and a detective asked the same questions he’d already answered twice over.

  The entire time, he had to take on faith that Andrea didn’t tell them anything about what he’d revealed. Her loyalty wasn’t so much what he trusted as the fact she’d probably never expect the police to believe her. The only danger was that she’d think he was delusional and needed help.

  The last time Gidion had seen the inside of an emergency room had been fifth grade. He’d been playing tag and managed to fracture both of his forearms. The twin casts had been uncomfortable. The simple act of taking a bath was humiliating, because he’d needed his father’s help.

  He didn’t want to think about his father. The hospital provided plenty of distractions. His bare chest and back were cold. They’d cut off his t-shirt when he’d determined he wasn’t going to be able to pull his shirt off over his head. The only part of his upper body that was covered was his right shoulder where the assassin had cut him with her sword. The nurse had given him a shot to dull the pain before stitching the wound and covering it with a bandage. Thanks to the painkiller, his shoulder didn’t hurt. What he felt was numb with the promise of pain.

  A uniformed officer went in and out of the room during the procedure, but by the time the nurse finished stitching him, a detective had arrived. The nurse went to find Gidion a shirt, leaving him alone with the detective.

  “Why were you there?” Detective Bristow resembled a quarterback stuffed into a brown suit with a pale green shirt. His paisley tie glowed, reflecting the light from his iPad, which he appeared to use to take notes. His dark skin, combined with the room’s dim lighting, made the rest of his body look like a tall and intimidating shadow. The cramped space of the room only added to the effect.

  “I tried to call my Grandpa.” His voice sounded strange. Even though the ringing from the shotgun blasts had vanished, everything was muffled as if he had cotton stuffed into his ears. “When he didn’t answer, I got worried.”

  The answer had satisfied most of the police up until now, but the detective wore a scowl more visibly than the badge clipped to his belt. He also made a habit of leaving a long silence between the end of Gidion’s answers and his next question. Dad used that same technique on Gidion when he was younger, relying on the intimidation of silence to trick him into admitting things. People had a tendency to keep talking, responding to the unspoken suggestion that they hadn’t provided enough of an answer yet. It worked on Gidion for a long time. Dad admitted to the trick after he realized Gidion had gotten wise to it. As frightening as this detective was, he didn’t hold a candle to Dad.

  “Why were you calling him?”

  “I was over this way, so I figured I’d see if he wanted me to bring him anything for a late dinner.”

  Gidion didn’t need to ask if the detective believed him, because his scowl deepened. He fixed Gidion with a silent stare. Gidion answered with his own silence.

  “You’re from Chesterfield. What were you doing over this way?”

  “I took my friend to get a bite from Proper Pie.”

  “You were going to take your date by your grandfather’s?”

  The word “date” plucked at Gidion’s conscience. Why that, of all things, made him feel guilty was absurd. Certainly, he’d committed fatter crimes to keep his Jiminy Cricket hopping mad.

  “Andrea isn’t my girlfriend.”

  He couldn’t afford to lose focus, because one wrong answer would end with him in a jail cell. The danger was less about being charged in Grandpa’s murder, even if that was what this cop was jonesing for an excuse to do. The real risk came from exposing his other activities. Most of what he had to say was delicately bent truth. He’d worked through all of this in his head after they’d cuffed him.

  That had been one of Grandpa’s lessons. Never lie unless you have to, and when you do lie, make sure to bury it in a lot of truth. You always remember truth; lies you forget.

  “What time did you get to your grandfather’s house?” The detective stared at his iPad as he took notes with each of Gidion’s answers.

  “I’m not sure. I think it was close to nine.”

  “Proper Pie closes at seven.”

  Gidion didn’t register the accusation until he looked up at the detective. Eyes filled with conviction insisted he’d made a mistake.

  “I’m sorry. What?”

  “I said Proper Pie closes at seven.” The detective took a step closer as he looked back at his iPad. “You said you tried to call your grandfather because you thought he’d want some dinner, but Proper Pie had closed almost two hours before you got to his house.”

  Gidion nodded. This guy was sharp, but he’d considered this already. “I wasn’t calling to see if he wanted anything from Proper Pie. He probably wouldn’t eat there anyway. He hates that kind of—”

  He stumbled as he realized he was still talking about Grandpa in the present tense. His hand shook. Clenching his hand into a fist didn’t help him steady his nerves. He kept telling himself not to fall apart, but then he’d see Grandpa’s body in his thoughts.

  “I figured he’d want something from Siné or City Dogs.” He closed his eyes and the words he pushed out sounded like they belonged to another person. “He liked those places better.” That one word “liked” stuck in his throat as if it was a sand spur.

  “So why were you so worried about your grandfather?” The detective shrugged with a show of exaggerated confusion. “Nine o’clock? My old man isn’t much older. He usually crawls into bed before that, if he hasn’t already fallen asleep in his recliner.”

  “Does your old man drink a lot?” The venom in his reply was a mistake, but this entire night had pitched his emotions on a roller coaster. Even worse, he hadn’t hit the lowest point yet.

  “That upset you?”

  Was this son of a bitch really trying use Grandpa’s drinking as a way to dig up a motive? “Yes, it upset me. I worried about his health.”

  “You always carry a sword and a box cutter to visit your grandfather?” The detective didn’t miss a step with his questions. Gidion got the impression he was just pushing his buttons to trick him into saying something inconsistent. Fortunately, the weapons he carried were the safest part of this conversation.

  “If I’m going to his house at night, yes. It was his idea. He gave me the sword.”

  “Why?”

  “Because his neighborhood sucks. I’m pretty sure your incident reports will confirm that.”

  “Who was this woman? How do you know her?”

  “I don’t know who she is.” This part of the conversation made him nervous. He had to be careful not to give up the fact that he’d seen her before tonight. The look in her eyes as she fought him hadn’t looked any different than in the security camera recording from the funeral home.

  “Really? She didn’t look familiar at all?”

  The detective’s skepticism didn’t surprise Gidion. More than once while talking shop over dinner, Dad had pointed out that random victims are the exception, not the rule. Gidion tried everything not to connect too many dots for this detec
tive, because every set of lines led back to him. Grandpa’s repeated warnings that he needed to lay low after taking out the local coven were chiseled into his conscience. That made it difficult to lie about his connection to the assassin.

  “I have no idea who she is.” The truth behind the words hurt. He needed to know more about her. She still held every advantage.

  “Describe her for me.”

  “Asian female, shoulder length hair, brown eyes. Looks a little older than me, but not by much. I didn’t see any scars; no tattoos.”

  “Would you recognize her, if you saw her again?”

  His hands gripped the edge of the bed, wishing his fingers were wrapped around her throat. “Without a doubt.”

  “What about the person driving the car?”

  Gidion shook his head. “A white male wearing sunglasses.”

  The detective held up a hand. “Sunglasses? While he was driving?”

  He nodded. “The frames were red, thin. The kind you’d get at the beach.”

  “Recognize him?”

  Gidion shook his head.

  “If you saw him again?”

  “I don’t know. Didn’t get a good look. Was more focused on the car.”

  The detective looked up from his iPad. “Don’t suppose you got the tags?”

  “Not all of it. They were Georgia plates starting with What The Fuck.”

  “Excuse me?” The detective’s scowl was replaced with something to suggest he was on the verge of getting pissed.

  “W-T-F,” Gidion said. “That’s what the tags started with. Was kind of hard not to remember that.”

  “You’re serious?” He covered his mouth, but Gidion caught the smile.

  “There were only three more characters, numbers. Couldn’t get those.” Lord knows, he’d tried. “I think it was a rental.”

  “That so?” The detective leaned back against the wall and canted his head. “How could you tell?”

  “There was a tiny green square with a white ‘e’ on the trunk like you see on Enterprise cars.”

  Gidion didn’t mind giving up that information. He needed to give this detective something to suggest he was being helpful. If all his answers had been variations on “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember,” then it wouldn’t take long before this interrogation got a lot tougher. Besides, money favored that the vampires would ditch the car somewhere and that they’d rented it using a fake ID and a credit card stolen from someone they’d eaten for dinner. The information wasn’t going to help these cops find Grandpa’s killer. The bad news was that it probably wouldn’t help him either.

  A knock at the door interrupted the interrogation. When the door cracked open, the uniformed officer leaned inside and whispered something.

  “Thanks.” The detective turned off his iPad. “Stay with the kid while I go talk to him.”

  The officer entered, and the detective left, like relay runners passing a baton. This guy wasn’t interested in talking, and Gidion wondered if he was discouraged from doing it. Instead, the cop pulled out his phone and appeared to text someone. Gidion wished he could do the same. They hadn’t taken his phone, but they’d made it clear he wasn’t to use it. He wanted to send a message to Andrea, to know if she was still with the police or if they’d let her go home.

  He knew she was all right, though. The police had called him an ambulance as soon as they realized his arm was cut. While sitting in the back of the ambulance, he’d been able to see Andrea sitting in a police car. She wasn’t hurt, just worried. He’d seen it in her eyes. The best he could do was mouth a reassurance that he was okay. She must have understood, because the urgency in her eyes had ebbed.

  When the detective returned, he wasn’t alone. Dad was here.

  Until that moment, he’d held himself together. When Dad wrapped his arms around him, he lost it.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The detective didn’t press Gidion for more information, but the limited exchange between the detective and his dad left an unspoken accusation in the air. They both knew Gidion wasn’t telling them everything.

  Before they left, the nurse brought Gidion a dark blue, short sleeve shirt, which looked like it was taken from the top half of a set of hospital scrubs. The shirt, a size too big, swallowed him. Gidion wore only his hoodie and jacket. The nurse helped him into it, which wasn’t easy to do without lifting his right arm. The hoodie went on more easily since it zipped up the front.

  Any doubts Gidion had that Dad suspected what had really happened tonight were confirmed twice. First, by how Dad didn’t ask him anything at the hospital about what happened. The effort not to ask wrinkled his father’s brow. The second confirmation came after the hospital discharged him at close to two in the morning. The walk to the parking garage was silent, and the night’s chill slithered against his arm and chest through the hole the assassin had cut into his shoulder and the thin material of his borrowed top.

  Dad watched everything but Gidion as they walked down the sidewalk. His father’s eyes focused on their surroundings, searching for signs of an ambush. Gidion would have done the same, but being with Dad somehow made hunting vampires feel like a fiction from a past life. If the assassin had chosen this moment to come after him, he wouldn’t have lasted ten seconds.

  Only after they’d climbed into Dad’s blue Corolla did the silence end.

  “We’ll get your car later,” Dad said as he started the car, “but not until after sunup.”

  Those last few words hurt more than the cut to Gidion’s shoulder, which had exchanged numbness for raging fire. The shot they’d given him was wearing off.

  Dad drove to the exit of the garage. He didn’t pull out just yet. His attention stayed focused on their surroundings.

  “I just need to know one thing before we go any further,” Dad said. “Is it safe to go to our house?”

  He heard Grandpa’s admonition to lay low repeat itself in his mind.

  “Gidion?”

  “I don’t know. They found the funeral home a few days ago.”

  Dad cursed under his breath. He didn’t ask who “they” were. Instead, he drove towards the interstate and got onto I-95 northbound, the opposite direction they would have taken to get home. Gidion didn’t ask where they were going. He didn’t really care.

  He stared out the car window, scared to look at Dad. He remembered something Grandpa once said about this inevitable day, when Dad would figure out what Gidion had been doing. ‘When he gets done fumin’ and bitchin’, he’ll be like me—damn proud of ya.’ Until tonight, he’d never doubted that. The idea that he’d make Dad proud had pushed him to hunt all the harder. He never dreamed he’d get Grandpa killed, that this was how Dad would find out he’d been lying to him.

  Despite the time, Gidion and his father weren’t the only car on the road. Dad’s vigilance didn’t ease a bit. Dad slowed the car, keeping it just a hair below the speed limit, which compared to the rest of the traffic on I-95 was the equivalent of crawling. The way Dad kept checking the review mirror made Gidion realize he was waiting to see if anyone tried to match their speed.

  As much as Gidion dreaded the tirade he knew must be coming, he wished Dad would say something to end the silence. Only after they eventually took the ramp from I-95 onto I-64 did Gidion realize where Dad must be going. They didn’t travel much longer, getting off on West Broad Street. Gidion was reminded of the night he’d gone hunting for GQ Drac. The bright lights from the businesses still open this late on a Saturday night felt more subdued this time.

  “I need some coffee.” Dad’s words came out in a dull voice. “You probably do, too.” Now that Gidion dared to look directly at him, he saw just how wrinkled and drawn Dad looked. When he got like this, Gidion could see some of Grandpa’s face in there.

  “Food?” Dad asked.

  The thought of food made his stomach roll. “No.”

  Familiar businesses and street signs rolled past them. They were very close to where Dad worked. Their sto
p ended up being a Wawa, one of those 24-hour convenience stores with a beige brick building decorated in red and yellow.

  Dad circled the business. This location had parking in the front and back. Five police cruisers were parked in the back. He’d heard Dad joke about how you could measure just how slow a night was by how many cop cars were parked at the Wawa, because the business let officers have free coffee. Dad didn’t park by the police cars. He pulled into a space in front, an area that was well-lit and placed them in full view of anyone inside the store.

  He turned off the car. “Come on.”

  Following Dad into the store was another set of mixed emotions. On the one hand, he feared being near the anger he knew must be buried in his father, but on the other, the thought of just sitting in the car by himself scared the hell out of him. That was funny, in the worst way. Some vampire hunter he’d turned out to be.

  Another fear gripped him as they went inside. A few people looked their way, and he’d never wished so badly to go unseen. He felt like he wore his failure, that the slice to his jacket’s shoulder was an open-mouthed scream.

  Maybe he didn’t want coffee that much, after all. He still got it. The Henrico County Police officers in their grey uniforms were clustered next to the island where all the condiments for the coffee were kept. One of the officers, an older one with salt and pepper hair, nodded to Dad and walked up to him. Gidion turned his back to them as he poured his coffee into a large cup.

  “We heard about your dad. I’m sorry.”

  The way Dad’s breath caught before he replied hurt like another cut to his shoulder.

  Gidion forced himself not to listen to the rest. The conversation between Dad and the officer was brief, though. When they went to leave, the cashier waved for them not to worry about it, said one of the officers had already taken care of it for them.

  Everything felt wrong, even the warmth from the coffee cup in his hands. He remembered something Andrea said during a rant at school earlier in the school year. She’d gotten a rare C on an algebra quiz and said she felt like a Renaissance refugee trapped in an abstract painting.