Cursed

by S. J. Harper

  “Yes. Did you know her?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “We met, of course. But she disappeared before I moved in.”

  “And how long ago did you move in?”

  “About a month ago.” He stands up and makes his way over to a coffeepot on the other side of the room. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee? We also have some sodas, bottled water.”

  “No, thank you. Do you know a woman named Amy Patterson?”

  His back is to me. The coffeepot is in his hand. There’s not even a moment’s hesitation. “Sure, we did work for Amy. I saw on the news she’s missing, too. Michael said you stopped by and—” He turns around to face me, alarm registering on his face. “You don’t think Michael has anything to do with Amy’s disappearance, do you? Or Isabella’s, for that matter. Michael wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  I shake my head. “No. Michael isn’t a suspect.”

  His shoulders relax. He returns to his desk with the coffee. Takes a sip. Sits down. “That’s a relief.”

  “What about Evan Porter?” I ask.

  “What about him?”

  “You know Evan?”

  He nods. “Sure. He’s my attorney. He’s . . . Are you telling me Evan’s missing, too?”

  Our eyes meet across the desk.

  The truth dawns on him. “You think I might have had something to do with Evan’s disappearance? Or Amy’s?”

  I can’t help noticing he didn’t mention Isabella. I add her back on and wait for the reaction. “What about Isabella? You didn’t forget her, did you?”

  “What? No!”

  But his breathing is rapid and shallow and he’s focused his gaze on the cup in his hand. I think I’ve gotten all I’m going to get from him with normal investigative techniques. Time for the big guns.

  “Alan?”

  He looks up at me. I take a breath, look him directly in the eye, and lower the dampening spell. Now he can’t bring himself to look away. He lowers his hand to the table, pushes the cup away. He leans forward in the chair, as if to get closer. Even a gay man is not immune to my power and beauty.

  “Alan? I’m going to ask you some questions.”

  The air stirs around us, blowing a slip of paper from his desk. The pen rolls to the floor. Alan doesn’t notice. A faint perfume fills the air.

  He nods and breathes it in.

  “You want to help,” I continue. “So you’re going to answer truthfully. Once you do, you’ll feel better.”

  Of course he will. He has no choice.

  I stand up, pushing back the chair in which I’d been sitting. The wind rises around me. The stacks of spreadsheets on his desk begin to rustle. Since his anxiety seems to rise every time I mention Isabella’s name, I start there. “Did you have anything to do with Isabella Mancini’s disappearance?”

  A buzzer rings before he can answer.

  “Is that the doorbell?” I ask Alan.

  He nods toward an open window. “It’s the front gate.”

  I look to see Zack outside. I place Alan’s phone on top of the papers and then use it to dial Zack’s cell. “I’m with Alan in his office. I’ve already started. I don’t want you to be affected by what I’m doing.”

  “Want me to stay outside?”

  “There’s a waiting room. You’ll be safe behind closed doors. Alan will buzz you in. Keep this line open. I’ll put us on speaker. You can listen in.”

  Zack agrees.

  I turn to Alan. “Let my friend in.”

  Alan reaches under his desk. The front door buzzes open. Seconds later I hear Zack’s footsteps.

  “Are you ready?” I ask.

  “Door’s closed.” Zack’s voice comes through the speaker. I can hear him pacing on the other side of it. “What have you got so far?”

  “Not much. We’re just getting started.” I turn my attention back to Alan. “Did you have anything to do with Isabella Mancini’s disappearance?”

  “No.”

  “What about the disappearances of Amy Patterson or Evan Porter?”

  “No. I told you.”

  “And yet they all have one thing in common. Green Leaf. And you.”

  Alan shakes his head. “I don’t understand.”

  He doesn’t. His expression is both troubled and sincere.

  Zack’s voice comes through the telephone’s speaker. “What’s going on, Emma? I thought you said he wouldn’t be able to lie.”

  “He can’t.” I peer closely at Alan. “You know Michael loves Isabella. If you’re holding anything back—”

  “Of course I’m not holding anything back. I’d do anything for Michael. Anything.”

  There it is. The truth in his statement strikes me like a slap in the face. We’ve made a mistake. I turn off the speaker and pick up the telephone receiver. “It’s not Alan.”

  “So what do we do now?” Zack’s expression reflects the same frustration I’m feeling.

  “I wish I knew.” Selfishly, I think about Liz first, then Dexter. “I hate to say it. Hate to even think it. Could Evan, Amy, and Isabella already be dead?”

  Alan stirs in his chair. “Of course Isabella’s dead. She’s a vampire.”

  I snap my attention back to him. “You know Isabella is a vampire?”

  “Yes.”

  I immediately replace the phone, reactivate the speaker. “Michael told you?”

  Alan shakes his head. “Not Michael, my mother.”

  “Your mother?” The revelation comes out of left field. Then I realize she probably learned of this from someone else.

  Zack’s thinking the same thing.

  “Barakov,” he spits out. “He’s the one. Ask him.”

  “Was it your stepfather?”

  I watch Alan’s face. “Barakov—Alexander—didn’t take them.”

  Alan’s shoulders slump. His hands rise to cover his face.

  A strange sensation washes over me. The gut instinct that the pieces are about to fall into place.

  “He’s not involved?” I ask.

  He answers with one word. “No.”

  “But you know who is?”

  I hold my breath.

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  He glances around. A sign of resistance. We’re wading through territory he’s kept deeply suppressed.

  I realize I may already have the answer. “Your mother?”

  Alan nods, his face crumpling in shame and pain. Eyes fill with tears, not just of sadness, of anger.

  “What’s happening?” Zack asks.

  I fall back into the chair across from Alan. “He’s nodding. Barbara Pierce is the one behind all of this.”

  “She’s saving lives. The vampires—they’re making a noble sacrifice.” He utters the words as if they’re his lifeline, a self-soothing mantra he’s been relying on to justify something horrible, something heinous. He’s holding on to the arms of the chair, knuckles white. “She said I had a choice. I could let Michael go, or I could save him. How could I just let him go?”

  I know what it’s like to stand by, watch the worst happen to someone you love, and know there’s not a thing you can do about. I’ve been there more than once. If someone offered me an out, would I have taken it? Possibly.

  “Make him explain,” Zack says.

  I don’t need to make him. He’s started to tell the truth and he’s on his way to feeling better. Just as I told him he would. He’ll want to get it all out now, even if that means betraying his mother and implicating himself. I feel a rush of empathy. With power comes sacrifice. Alan chose to save Michael, and in doing so, he lost a piece of himself.

  Alan stares across the desk at me through haunted eyes. “I want to help. I’ll tell you everything.”

  Of course he will. I draw my powers back in and seal the doors shut. We
won’t need them anymore. Not with him. I walk over to the office door and open it, surprising Zack on the other side.

  “You can come in now.”

  Alan doesn’t even wait for introductions. He begins in a barely comprehensible rush. “It’s not her fault. She’s been given no choice. She made a mistake, yes. But now she’s having to pay and pay and pay. That horrible man. Killing all of those people. Making her . . . all for what? Money. She was going crazy. She had to find a better way. And now . . .”

  Zack holds up his hand. “Slow down. Let’s start with who’s been killed.”

  “Charlotte Barakov, for one. That’s where it started. When Mother hired Davis Mager to get rid of her. It was crazy and stupid, not to mention wrong.” He shakes his head. “But what that man has forced her to do since . . .”

  Zack takes a seat on the edge of the desk. “So your mother hired Mager to kill the first Mrs. Barakov, then what? He blackmailed her?”

  Alan nods. “Yes. About a year after Mager got rid of Charlotte, he contacted Mother. His daughter was in need of a heart transplant. Only he didn’t want to wait for a voluntary donor. He blackmailed Mother into helping him identify the right person, then into doing the surgery. Naively, she thought that would be the end of it. But it got her in deeper. Gave Mager the idea that they could harvest organs and sell them on the black market. He had connections. At first they targeted the homeless.” He stops abruptly, his eyes darting between Zack and me.

  “And?” Zack encourages him to continue with a wave of his hand.

  But Alan’s eyes have settled on me. “You didn’t flinch when I mentioned Isabella was a vampire.”

  I cross my arms in front of my chest. “No, I didn’t. You said at first they targeted the homeless. Are you telling us at some point Mager and your mother shifted their focus to vampires?”

  He nods. “She said she couldn’t live with what she was doing. But she couldn’t get out of it, either. She was getting in deeper and deeper. Then the idea came to her. She knew about Alexander’s experimentation, about his technique. She convinced Mager to invest, to allow her to explore the possibility of using vampires instead of humans. They’re already dead. And their organs regenerate.”

  “Your mother and Mager are kidnapping vampires, then harvesting and selling vampire organs?” asks Zack.

  “Apparently vampires are universal donors. Mother discovered a vampire organ can be transplanted into a human with no danger of rejection. Mager’s doing the kidnapping.” Alan’s face turns red. “Although it seems Mother has looked through Alexander’s patients’ records from time to time to find ‘prospects.’ Her word, not mine.”

  I sit again, trying to absorb what he’s telling me. “And then your mother operates on these prospects against their will?”

  Even stares down at the desktop in front of him. “Healthy new organs save lives.” It’s repeated like a lesson he’s been forced to memorize.

  “Lives like Michael Dexter’s?” I shake my head. “Alan, your mother has Isabella, Amy, and Evan, doesn’t she?”

  He meets my gaze head-on. “I don’t know about Amy and Evan, I swear. Only Isabella.”

  My skin is crawling. The realization of what Barbara Pierce is doing is making my stomach churn. So barbaric and so unnecessary.

  “Where is she keeping them?” asks Zack. “And how is she containing them? No human can simply take a vampire if he or she doesn’t want to be taken.”

  “Silver. That’s where Alexander’s research came in handy. The way I understand it, Mager uses tranquilizer darts containing silver to capture the vampires. Then Mother stores the shells in containers where they’re given silver-laced anesthesia to keep them sedated and trapped.”

  “The shells?”

  Alan swallows. “That’s what she calls them. They don’t have souls, you know. They aren’t human. The shells are like . . . like incubators.”

  “For organs,” Zack adds. “She’s built a goddamned organ factory using vampires. Have you known where Isabella was this entire time?”

  “Have you?” I repeat.

  He shakes his head. “No. I didn’t even know about Michael’s illness until after she went missing. We dated for several months and he didn’t breathe a word of it. After Isabella’s disappearance, he went downhill fast. There was an emergency hospitalization. Isabella was his primary contact. With her gone and no family, he had the hospital call me. I went to my mother right away, of course. Michael needs a liver transplant.”

  Alan climbs to his feet and walks over to the window.

  “And your mother offered this neat and tidy solution?” Zack asks, his voiced laced with disdain.

  Alan turns to face us. “I had to do something! Michael had exhausted all normal channels. He’s on a waiting list, but he’s failing so fast. I told him that there might be another way—that we had money and could look for alternatives. There are always favors to be had if one is willing to pay the price. Michael wouldn’t hear of it. He said he wouldn’t buy his way to the top of the list at the expense of other deserving patients. He’s ready to die.”

  “Only, you aren’t ready to let him go,” I say.

  Alan glances at the clock on the wall above the coffeemaker. “Michael’s was supposed to be the last life Isabella saved. According to Mother, she’s at the end of her period of . . . usefulness. After a while, the levels of silver necessary to control them turns the organs, spoils them.”

  Zack’s on his feet. “How much time do we have?”

  “The operation is supposed to take place this afternoon. Maybe an hour,” answers Alan.

  Zack fires off a series of questions, short and direct.

  “Are there other vampires being held hostage?”

  Alan nods. “I don’t know how many.”

  “Is there a security system?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know the code?”

  “No.”

  “Are there guards?”

  “Yes. One. Mostly just to sign visitors in and out. And to provide security after hours and during the weekends.”

  “Anything else we should know?”

  Zack walks over to a refurbished cast-iron radiator next to the window and gives it a good yank.

  Alan hesitates.

  Zack turns his attention back on him. “Well?”

  “There’s a door,” Alan continues. “It’s hidden behind a bookcase in Mother’s office. It’s the way into the laboratory.”

  “Address?”

  Pierce’s lab is not far from Barakov’s office. We should be able to get there in ten, fifteen minutes tops.

  Zack reaches back, under his suit, with one hand for his handcuffs. With his other hand he grabs Alan’s wrist. “We’ll come back for you.” After cuffing him to the radiator, Zack turns to me. “No way he can move that thing. I’ll drive ahead and scope out the building. Call me when you get there.”

  Alan sinks to the floor. “Michael’s going to die. And I’m going to jail, aren’t I?”

  He’s come clean. The least I can do is give him the truth. But what exactly is the truth? Nothing he said to us could be used in court. And even if it could, what kind of story are we talking about? A doctor using vampire organs in transplants? Who would believe it? Once the word got around the vampire community, though, I’m afraid he’d have more to fear from them than any human court.

  I heave a sigh. “I don’t know, Alan. Depends entirely on your mother. If she’s willing to take responsibility for the murder of Barakov’s first wife and the homeless victims, you may get a break. But I think if I were you, I’d worry more about retribution from the vampires. They don’t play by the same rules we do.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Since it’s early Saturday morning, it only takes me fifteen minutes to get across town. During the drive, my thoughts are as frenetic as th
ey are fractured. This case has turned into a nightmare with ramifications that can literally shake the worlds of both humans and supernaturals. I was serious when I told Alan he may have more to fear from the vampires than any human court. And what about this Davis Mager? Will Barbara Pierce give him up? It may be her only way to win favor with the district attorney and, possibly, immunization for her son.

  The address Alan gave us for his mother’s office comes into view. It’s a fairly new three-story luxury medical building built around a courtyard. I pull into the parking lot next to Zack’s car and climb out.

  Unlike in her husband’s office, there is a large air-conditioning unit perched on the flat roof and signs announcing that Crown Security monitors the premises. The area around the building and adjacent parking lot is landscaped with cascading bougainvillea and large ferns, giving the appearance of a well-kept residential yard. There’s a sign on the front listing Dr. Barbara Pierce’s name among the other medical tenants and a telephone number to reach the security desk outside of regular business hours, including the weekend. The security gate, which leads to a courtyard, is closed and locked.

  Still no Zack in sight. Before I have the chance to pull my cell from my pocket to call him, Zack appears and opens the gate from the inside.

  “How’d you get in?”

  “A little trick I picked up from my previous job.” He pulls the gate closed behind me.

  “Have any tricks up your sleeve to get us past that?” I point up ahead to the building’s main entrance. A security camera hovers over the door, no doubt monitored by the guard inside.

  Zack scoffs. “Amateurs. The security is unbelievably sloppy. I’ve already found an alternative route. Come this way.”

  The courtyard has a fountain in the middle. He leads me behind it and around to a side yard. Separating the side yard from the front is a six-foot stucco wall with a locked gate. Zack easily scales the wall and seconds later the gate swings open for me.

  “No camera,” he says, pointing to the door up ahead. “And just an old-fashioned dead bolt.” The door is partially hidden by a screen of thick bushes. As we walk toward it, Zack pulls out a ballpoint pen and begins to unscrew the top. The casing is hollow and contains a variety of picks and tension tools.