Pale Death

by Aimée Thurlo

  With the detectives joining the survivors of Wayne’s team, giving first aid and awaiting the EMTs, Lee and Diane ran toward their vehicle. Lee had thought for a second to take the SUV, but saw that one of the tires had been ripped open by the collision with the gate. The garage was empty of vehicles now except for a riding mower.

  “Wait here. I’ll be faster, and you can check on Marci Walker. If Tanner has a cell phone, she may already be getting a call,” Lee yelled.

  Diane nodded and came to a stop, bringing out her cell phone again as Lee ran at Olympic sprinter’s speed to their unit. He was reluctant to move any faster, realizing that in this neighborhood, shots would most certainly bring people to their windows. It was a tough choice, sometimes, holding back like this in order to preserve his own identity.

  Less than thirty seconds later Lee braked hard, slid to a stop, and Diane jumped in.

  “Wouldn’t you know it? Marci’s given them the slip! The officer lost sight of her when she went into a rest room, and when he sent someone in to check, she was gone, out a small window and into the alley, apparently.”

  “How long has it been?” Lee asked, speeding down the street toward the location of the dealership.

  “Only about ten minutes.”

  “Only? She could be blocks away, even if she stayed on foot. And there’s still that missing Corolla.”

  Diane nodded. “Officers are sweeping the area, and at the same time, watching for Tanner and the red motorcycle.”

  “Marci knows she’s got to get off the streets. Call FPD and have them start checking out the commercial buildings within walking distance, and find out if there are any businesses or rentals that the Walkers owned. If she’d been able to contact Tanner, they’re probably going to meet up somewhere. He can’t risk staying out much longer. Just a rip in those coveralls or an exposed section of wrist where his gloves meet his sleeve and he’s going to burst into flames.”

  “At least she’s not a vampire.”

  “Not yet, obviously. But now that they’ve been discovered, all that may change. She’s obviously become part of this.”

  Diane shook her head. “Just what we need. Two killer vampires on the loose.”

  She frowned. “I just sounded like someone from one of those old movies I used to watch on Sunday afternoon Horror Theater.”

  “Yeah. Who’d have ever thunk it? Your worst nightmare is now providing your backup.”

  Diane smiled at Lee, then had to grab hold as he made a screeching turn onto a major avenue, slipping expertly in between two fast-moving vehicles. “You’re much more than just a B-movie monster to me, Lee.”

  They both started laughing then.

  CHAPTER 13

  Diane was speaking to the Farmington officers who’d been assigned to watch Marci Walker at the auto showroom. Speaking was probably the wrong term—reaming out was more descriptive of the true nature of the one-sided conversation.

  Lee had spoken to a few of the dealership employees, and clarified that Marci Walker had spent several minutes outside in the sun, checking the inventory, so that confirmed she wasn’t a vampire yet.

  Marci had also been recently interested, according to one of the salesmen, in a big pickup-camper combination they were offering in an upcoming hunting season promotion. Marci had driven the vehicle off the lot yesterday morning, saying she had a potential buyer who wanted it brought to him for a test drive.

  The vehicle wasn’t at the main residence, Lee knew, so where had it gone? It was something to mention to Diane once she finished with the Farmington officers. He knew it wouldn’t take long, because Diane tended to come right to the point, then move on.

  Lee was standing inside the showroom, safely in the shade, when he noticed a familiar-looking vehicle near the service department where auto shop customers parked their vehicles. As he focused on the silver SUV the driver ducked down.

  As Lee walked purposefully out the door, Diane glanced his way curiously, but Lee didn’t have time to explain. Charles Alderete had raised up again, and this time they made eye contact.

  Charles cursed, then reached down and started the engine.

  “Don’t even think about it, Alderete. We need to talk.” By then, Lee was ten feet from the vehicle and Charles had the common sense to raise his empty hands up so Lee could see them.

  “What’s going on, Officer Hawk?”

  “I think you know already, Charles. You’ve been following us again, haven’t you?”

  “Kind of. Actually I was watching Dr. Wayne’s plush rental apartment, like you suggested,” Charles said. “When his men took off in their raid gear, I followed them into that upper-crust neighborhood. But I hung back too far and lost them. By the time I relocated their vehicle, you and Diane were already racing away, so I went after you. But I noticed the name ‘Walker’ on the mailbox as I was taking off. Does Walker own this business, and how is he connected to Tanner?”

  “Can’t say, not right now.” Lee looked at the man’s eyes, but couldn’t sense any deception. “Did you happen to notice a man on a motorcycle racing through that neighborhood while you were looking for Wayne’s men?”

  “A big red one?”

  Lee nodded.

  “Can’t say, not right now.”

  “How’d you like to spend the next few days in a cell?”

  “You wanna trade information, or you wanna lean on me?”

  “You tell me where the motorcycle went, and I’ll back off.”

  “Okay. I’m guessing it was Tanner on the motorcycle?”

  “Right. Now, where did he go?”

  “Down the street, heading east. Which would tend to suggest he wasn’t coming here. So, it looks like you guessed wrong.” Charles shook his head, then cursed. “Wish I’d have followed him instead of you. That helmet he was wearing sure covered him up. That, and the overalls. Even the gloves weren’t that out of place. I should have caught on.”

  “Because a vampire needs to stay covered up during the daytime?”

  “Something like that.” Charles looked at him very closely, but Lee’s sunglasses hid his pupil size, if he was counting on reading Lee. “You know a lot about vampires.”

  “Hey, I watch movies. TV too.”

  “Okay, Officer Hawk. Now I’ve done my part. Why did you guys come here, and why is Diane ragging those Farmington cops?”

  “Tanner stole a red Mustang from this dealership after getting a key from inside one of the offices, so we were guessing he might be coming back.”

  “Gotta be more to it than that.” Charles reached over and opened his glove compartment, revealing a scanner. “Officers are looking for a woman named Marci Walker. No coincidence that this is the same last name as on the mailbox at that fancy house that Dr. Wayne’s people raided. Did Tanner kidnap one of the Walkers?”

  “Mr. Walker, the former owner of this dealership, died months ago. His wife disappeared from here earlier today and we’re trying to find her. That’s pretty much it.”

  Charles looked at him for a while. “That’s all you’re going to say? There’s got to be more.”

  Lee shrugged. “I’ve already told you more than I should because you know Agent Lopez, and because you lost your sister. But one word of advice, Charles. Be careful, stay out of the way, and try to stay alive.”

  Lee turned and walked toward Diane, who was alone now, watching. She nodded to Charles, then accompanied Lee to their vehicle without speaking.

  “I found out about the missing pickup with the camper shell while you were talking to Charles. How’d he find us, anyway?”

  Lee explained about Wayne, and told Diane what he’d said to Charles. She picked up the radio mike, and gave instructions to Dispatch to keep a lookout for the motorcycle and the camper, then she called Dr. Wayne. A few minutes later she hung up.

  Lee started the engine. “Back to the Walker home?”

  She nodded. “We’ll meet Victor there. He screwed us royally trying to take Tanner like that right in f
ront of our noses, but that cost him two more men. The guy shot in the chest just died. Maybe now Victor will come clean with us about Tanner.”

  The return trip to the Walker estate took less than ten minutes. Farmington was now sprawled out wide on both sides of the river, but the roads were pretty good and it wasn’t even close to the size of Albuquerque.

  When they arrived, they immediately noticed an empty white SUV parked beside the curb just past the damaged gate. A yellow crime-scene tape was stretched across the driveway entrance, and an OMI van was backed up almost even with it. An ambulance was alongside, and as they parked across the street, a body bag on a gurney was being loaded into the ambulance by two attendants. Another body was already inside the vehicle.

  Lee and Diane ducked under the tape, showed their IDs to the uniformed officer, then walked into the still-open garage. The two Farmington detectives, Shannon and Esterbrook, were processing the scene. Seeing who had arrived, Shannon looked up, the obvious question in his eyes.

  “Tanner’s still on the loose, but without the rifle now.” Lee noticed the Remington on the garage floor. “He may have met up with Mrs. Walker, then taken off in a pickup with a camper shell. There’s a bulletin out now on the pickup and motorcycle.”

  Detective Shannon stood. “So Tanner did have a woman helping out. Maybe now that she’s been identified, it’ll drive him into hiding and slow the body count.”

  “Maybe. Where’s Dr. Wayne?” They hadn’t seen the federal man outside, and he wasn’t in the garage, at least downstairs.

  Detective Esterbrook pointed toward the narrow metal stairs. “Up there. There’s a small apartmentlike workshop, and it looks like that’s where Tanner was spending his daytime hours. Oh, and Tanner may have taken a bullet as he broke out of the garage. We’re going to be checking for a blood trail once we process this area.”

  “Got gloves?” Detective Shannon added.

  Lee nodded, pulling a pair of latex gloves from his jacket pocket and handing them to Diane. He then brought out two more for himself.

  “Try not to touch the handrails,” Esterbrook said. “They need dusting.”

  “We’ll be careful,” Diane said as she put on the second glove. Leading the way, she climbed up the metal steps to the second floor of the garage. The structure had been completely finished and painted even on the inside, and was pleasant and clean—except for the two bloody spots on the floor below.

  When they reached the small office-workshop, the surviving federal marshal from the earlier raid was using a flashlight to search beneath a metal futon, which was still laid out in bed mode. The rumpled condition of the blankets and the indented pillow suggested that Tanner had been resting there.

  Dr. Wayne was standing beside a big metal desk, examining pages of the local newspaper spread across its surface. He turned and nodded to them, no expression at all showing on his face. “Special Agent Lopez, Officer Hawk.”

  Diane ignored the doctor and turned to catch the attention of Dr. Wayne’s man, who’d stopped what he was doing and had risen to his knees to see who the visitors were.

  “The detectives downstairs can use your help—right now,” Diane announced.

  The man, who’d probably aged ten years already today, got the message from her tone but still looked at Victor before answering. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied at last, getting a nod, then climbed down the stairs slowly, careful not to touch the handrails.

  Diane’s voice was low, but lethal. “Your tactics suck, Dr. Wayne, and the deaths of those two men are on your head. What in the hell were you thinking? No, forget that—you obviously weren’t thinking. Do you have any tactical experience?” Diane’s voice had turned to ice, and though Victor was a head taller, she was in his face.

  Lee hadn’t seen her that pissed off in a long time. She was right, of course, but he wondered if venting her frustration out at the federal man would do any good. Victor Wayne had obviously sat back while Diane and the locals did his legwork, then moved in at the last minute to try and take Tanner from under their noses.

  “Officer Hawk, if Dr. Wayne doesn’t tell us everything he knows right now, would you mind throwing him down the stairs for me?”

  Victor smiled, but Lee knew she wasn’t kidding. And it wasn’t difficult matching the coldness in Diane’s words. After all, Victor Wayne’s hirelings had tortured Tanner for months simply because Tanner was a vampire. “No problem. Head first okay?”

  Victor’s mouth dropped open and his veneer of arrogance lost a layer before he could recover. “You really think you can muscle me around, Hawk?”

  Lee reached out before Victor’s next heartbeat, grabbed him by the belt, and lifted the two-hundred-pound man off the floor at least eight inches. “Ever felt real pain, Victor?”

  The big man clenched his fists for a second, then decided it was a bad idea and almost immediately held them out in submission. “Okay, okay, I’m not a fighter. Set me down and we’ll talk.”

  “No, Victor. You’ll talk. Got it?” Diane said.

  Victor nodded, squirming slightly as he dangled in the air.

  Diane turned to Lee. “Sorry. I know you would have enjoyed doing it. Maybe later.”

  Lee lowered Victor slowly, then let go of his belt, stepping back a foot, but still within easy reach.

  Victor cleared his throat, then managed a weak smile. “You wouldn’t have really …”

  Diane raised an eyebrow.

  “Sideways. Head first would have been too easy,” Lee spoke softly without inflection.

  Victor’s smile faded and he tried to step back, adjusting his trousers, but he bumped into the desk and nearly fell. Once he regained his balance, he cleared his throat again and looked back and forth between Diane and Lee nervously. “I feel really bad about what happened to my people. They were good men. I was just trying to take Tanner alive. His … biology could have helped balance out the loss of life. The strength and speed he’s shown, and his fear of sunlight, all remarkable. Did you know my man is sure he shot him in the thigh, yet Tanner drove off without even flinching? Stewart Tanner is extraordinary. We need to bring him back under our control so we can study what he really is.”

  “Quit running off at the mouth, and don’t tell me you’re beginning to believe that vampire crap. If you’d have let us do our job, a lot of lives could have been saved,” Diane argued.

  Lee was wondering now how close Victor was getting to the truth. Belief in vampires among people like him was dangerous. Lee knew he had to subvert those thoughts. “Did one of the detectives downstairs tip you off about our plans?” Lee asked. He suspected it had probably been the patrolman assigned to block the gate, but he wanted to hear it from Victor.

  “It was Officer Wrightmeyer, the patrolman watching the gate, but the news didn’t give us much time to come up with a better plan. I realize now that I should have coordinated the assault with you and the detectives.”

  “You knew all along that Tanner grew up in Farmington, didn’t you, Victor? Yet you still missed the part about his affair with Marci Walker. You and your people are sloppy.” Diane was fishing, but on the right track, obviously.

  “Victor didn’t care about Tanner’s past—once he had his guinea pig,” Lee reminded Diane in a disgusted voice.

  “Okay, all true,” Victor admitted reluctantly. “We need to move past that and concentrate on finding Tanner. His hiding place has been compromised, and we know about his girlfriend. He’s going to have to find somewhere else to lie low. The stolen rifle was left behind, so all he’s got is a pistol now, right? And he’s been shot.” Victor was sounding more confident now that he realized he wasn’t going to be beaten unconscious—or worse. He took a step in the direction of the stairs, and Lee blocked his way.

  “Don’t start relaxing now, Victor. You’re not leaving this room on your own power until we get all of Tanner’s history, starting from the moment you and your ‘people’ discovered him,” Diane said.

  “It’ll take a whil
e.” Victor pulled out the desk chair and sat down, facing them.

  For the next ten minutes, Dr. Wayne essentially verified what they already knew from the documents and secret files they’d seen, and added details surrounding Tanner’s initial discovery and incarceration. Finally Victor stood. “Can we get back to work now?”

  Lee and Diane exchanged glances. “Okay,” she finally said. “But if you get any information we should have—and don’t tell us immediately—it’s going straight to my boss and in the first line of every report I file—not to mention the press.”

  “I’ll do much worse than that, Victor. I’ll make sure that Tanner finds out you’re the man responsible for all the misery in his life. Give him a focal point for his hatred, so to speak,” Lee said flatly.

  Diane nodded her approval. “Sounds fair. Now let’s find Tanner and Marci Walker before they leave New Mexico and disappear completely.”

  CHAPTER 14

  The surviving member of Victor’s “team” was now near the gate, beside the black SUV, pointing to something on the ground when Lee and Diane walked up. Victor crouched to scrape a sample of the gray powder into an evidence pouch.

  “I know I hit him, he grabbed his thigh and almost wiped out the bike. You can’t take a bullet in the leg without bleeding.”

  Lee noted the biological ash where the vampire blood had burned away, leaving just a residue. He’d seen it before. Unfortunately, so had Victor Wayne.

  “Looks like the same residue from where that CIA man died over in Albuquerque. And near where you two encountered those terrorists a few months earlier,” Victor looked up at Diane to confirm.

  “Doesn’t look like it came from blood, but, hey, I’m not the forensics expert here,” she said, not looking at Lee.

  “Suppose this scorch mark originated from that gasoline bomb, or the flare Tanner used to set it off?” Lee said, turning to point toward the burned section of grass and the fragments of glass, paper, and residue scattered around the garage and backyard of the Walker residence. “It’ll take hours to find every piece of that bomb.”