by Tanya Huff
“Yeah, ignoring for the moment a teenage boy whose death you’re also directly responsible for, I’ve got two.” Vicki shoved at her glasses. “Why are you telling us all this?”
“Well, there are theories that say confession is a human compulsion, but mostly because our little experiment has now moved completely out of my control. Catherine slipped into the abyss and I have no intention of following her.” Although just for a moment, with her hand on the latch of the casket, she’d come close. How far, she’d wondered, would they be able to go with a really fresh corpse? And then Donald had told her. But that was personal and no one’s business but hers. “And because Donald’s dead.”
“So’s that kid and so’s my mother!”
“The kid was an accident. Your mother was dying. Donald had everything to live for.” For an instant her face crumpled then it smoothed again. “What’s more,” she continued, pouring the final dregs from the bottle, “I liked Donald.”
“You liked my mother!”
Dr. Burke looked placidly across the desk at Vicki. “You said you had two questions. What’s the second?”
How could this creature sit there so calmly and admit to such horror? Caught up in an emotional maelstrom, Vicki was unable to speak. Realizing that the next time she broke, Celluci wouldn’t be able to stop her, she spread her hands and stepped back from the desk.
He recognized the signs and moved forward.
“Where,” he asked, “is Henry Fitzroy?”
“With Catherine.”
He took a deep breath and ran both hands up through his hair. “All right. Where is Catherine?”
Dr. Burke shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea.”
Thirteen
“All right. Let’s see if I understand what you’re saying.” Vicki drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Screaming and throwing things would contribute nothing to the situation. “Your graduate student, Catherine, who is crazy, has murdered your other graduate student, Donald. When you went back to the lab, late this afternoon, you discovered she’d hidden Henry and you don’t know where she is—they are.”
Dr. Burke nodded. “Essentially.”
So much for good intentions. “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU MEAN, ESSENTIALLY?”
Alcohol-induced remoteness cracked as Vicki grabbed the lapels of Dr. Burke’s lab coat and nearly dragged her over the desk. “If you could loosen your grip,” she gasped, “I might find it easier . . . to answer your question.”
Vicki merely snarled inarticulately.
“Detec . . . tive!”
Celluci shifted his gaze to a point about six inches over the doctor’s head, expression aggressively neutral.
Collar cutting into her windpipe, Dr. Burke realized further hesitation would only make things worse. “She’s in the old Life Sciences building. Your vampiric friend is locked in a big metal box. Trying to maneuver that out the door and into her van would’ve attracted a bit of attention. Where in the building . . .” Considering her position, the shrug was credible. “. . . I have no idea.”
Vicki didn’t so much release her hold as shove the older woman back into the chair. “Your lab is in there? In the old building?”
“Yes.” Rubbing the back of her neck where the fabric had dug in, Dr. Burke snapped, “And so is your mother. Somewhere.” She shot a superior look up over the edge of her glasses. “Your dead mother. Walking around.”
My dead mother. Walking around. Anger couldn’t stand under the weight of that pronouncement.
“Vicki?”
She fought free of the image of her mother flattened against the window and met Celluci’s worried gaze.
“We have a confession. We can call in Detective Fergusson now. You don’t have to have anything more to do with this.”
“Nice try, Mike.” She swallowed, trying to wet a throat gone dry. “But you’re forgetting about Henry.”
“Mustn’t forget Henry.” Above the hand still rubbing at her throat, Dr. Burke almost grinned. “I’d love to hear you explain him to the local police. Until you find Henry, you’ve got to keep this quiet. And after? What about after?” She shook her head at their expressions and sighed, placing both hands flat on her desk. “Never mind, I’ll tell you. There won’t be an after. Until Catherine contacts me, you haven’t a chance of finding your friend. There’s a million stupid, useless cubbyholes in that building and she could’ve stuck him in any of them. You’re just going to have to sit here with me and wait for her phone call.”
“And then?”
“Then I play along, she tells me where she’s stashed him, you get him out, call the police, and she pays for Donald.”
Vicki’s eyes narrowed. “And you’ll pay for my mother.”
“Ms. Nelson, if it makes you happy, I’ll even pay for dinner.”
“What if she doesn’t call?” Celluci demanded, cutting off Vicki’s response.
“She said she would.”
“You said she’s crazy.”
“There is that.”
“Mike, I can’t wait.” Vicki took four steps toward the door, turned on one heel, and took three steps back. “I can’t base everything on what a crazy woman may or may not do. I’m going to find him. She . . .” A toss of her head indicated the doctor. “. . . can take us to the lab. We’ll work a search pattern from there.”
“Not on your life.” She wasn’t going near the lab. Bad enough she could still hear him calling her in spite of half a bottle of Scotch. “You’ll have to drag me. Which might alert Security. There’ll be a brouhaha. Your Henry Fitzroy ends up confiscated by the government. You want to go to the lab, you can find it on your own.”
Vicki leaned forward, laying her hands on the desk, fingertips not quite touching the doctor’s, her posture more of a threat than her earlier actions had been. “Then you’ll give us very precise directions.”
“Or you’ll what? Try to pay attention, Ms. Nelson—you can’t do anything until you rescue your friend.”
“I can beat your fucking face in.”
“And what will that accomplish? If you beat the directions out of me, I can guarantee they won’t be accurate. Try to be realistic, Ms. Nelson, if you can. You and your flat-footed friend here can go and try to find Mr. Fitzroy, but you’ll have to leave me out of it.” Not even in words would she trace the path to the lab again. “But just to show there’s no hard feelings, I’ll let you in on a nonsecret. There’s a way into the old building from the north end of the underground parking lot. Security’s supposed to have video cameras down there, but they ran out of money. Don’t say I never gave you anything. Happy trails.”
Celluci took hold of Vicki’s shoulder and pulled her gently but inexorably away from the desk. “And what will you be doing while we’re searching?”
“The same thing I was doing when you showed up.” Dr. Burke bent and opened the bottom drawer of her desk, pulling out an unopened bottle of Scotch. “Attempting to drink myself into a stupor. Thank God, I always keep a spare.” It took three tries before the paper seal tore. “I assure you, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Why not, when at the very least you’ll be facing a murder charge?” Vicki asked, shaking free of Celluci’s hold.
“You’re still on about your mother, aren’t you?” The doctor sighed and stared for a moment into the pale depths of the amber liquid before continuing. “I lost interest in the game when Donald died.” The bottle became a silver casket. She shuddered and raised her head, looking past Vicki’s glasses, meeting her eyes. “Essentially—and I beg your pardon, Ms. Nelson, if the word offends you, but it’s the only one that fits—essentially, I just don’t care any more.”
And she didn’t. Even through her own grief and rage and confusion, Vicki could see that. “Come on.” Pulling her bag up onto her shoulder, she jerked her head toward the door. “She’s not going anywhere right now.”
“You believe her?”
Vicki took another look into Dr. Burke’s eyes and recognized what she sa
w there. “Yeah. I believe her.” She paused at the door. “One more thing; you may not care now but don’t think you’ll be able to use your knowledge of Henry as a bargaining chip later . . .”
“Later,” Dr. Burke interrupted, both hands around the bottle to keep from spilling any of the Scotch as she refilled her mug, “without an actual creature to run tests on, I can scream vampire until I’m blue in the face and no one will believe a word I say. Grave robbing does not help to maintain credibility in the scientific community.”
“Not to mention murdering one of your grad students,” Celluci pointed out dryly.
Dr. Burke snorted and raised the mug in a sarcastic salute. “You’d be surprised.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Celluci slammed the flat of his hand against the wall in frustration. “This place is like a maze; hallways that don’t go anywhere, classrooms that lead to hidden offices, labs that suddenly appear . . .”
Vicki played the powerful beam of her flashlight down the hall. With the one in four emergency lighting on in the old building, she could see well enough to keep from crashing into things but not well enough to identify the things she wasn’t crashing into. Only the area starkly illuminated by her flashlight held any definition. It was like she was moving through the slides of a bizarre vacation, stepping into a scene just as it was replaced by the next. Her nerves were stretched so tightly she could almost hear them twang with every movement.
Her dead mother was walking around in this building.
Every time she moved her circle of sight she wondered, Will this be the time I see her? And when all that showed was another empty room or bit of hall, she wondered, Is she standing in the darkness beside me? Under her jacket and sweater, her shirt clung to her sides, and she had to keep switching the flashlight from hand to hand to dry her palms.
“This isn’t going to work.” Her arm dropped to her side and the hall slid into darkness except for the puddle of illumination now spilling over her feet. “The layout of this place defeats any kind of a systematic search. “We’ve got to use our heads.”
“Granted,” Celluci agreed. He tucked himself up against her left shoulder; close enough, he judged, for her to see his face. “But we’ve got a crazy woman who’s run off with a vampire. That doesn’t exactly lend itself to logical analysis.”
“It has to.” Adjusting her glasses, more for the comfort of a familiar action than from necessity, she gave half her mind over to searching the scant information they had for clues. The other half of her mind filtered the noises of an old building at night, listening for the approach of shuffling footsteps. Suddenly, she turned to squint up at Celluci. “Dr. Burke said Henry was in a large metal box.”
“So?”
“And she implied it was heavy.”
“Again, so?”
Vicki almost smiled. “Look at the floor, Celluci.”
Together, they bowed their heads and stared at the pale, institutional gray tile, dulled by the passage of thousands of feet. A number of nicks and impressions dimpled the surface with shadow and darker still were a half-dozen signatures of black rubber heels.
“If the box is as massive as Dr. Burke implied,” Vicki said, raising her head and looking Celluci in the eyes, “one way or another it’ll have left its mark. Rubber wheels will scuff. Metal wheels will imprint.”
Celluci nodded slowly. “So we look for the tracks she left moving the box. It’s still a big building. . . .”
“Yeah, but we know damn well she didn’t take it up and down the stairs.” Vicki raised her arm and shone the flashlight down the hall. “The power’s on, so the elevators must be working. We check just outside them on every floor for the marks and then backtrack from there.”
An appreciative grin spread over Celluci’s face. “You know, that’s practically brilliant.”
Vicki snorted. “Thanks. You needn’t sound so surprised.”
For no reason other than that they had to start somewhere, they began working their way down from the eighth, and highest, floor. On three, they found what they were looking for—pressed not only into the tile but into the metal lip leading onto the elevator, were the marks of two pairs of wheels about four feet apart. Silently, they stepped ut into the hall and let the door wheeze closed behind them.
No one appeared to investigate the noise.
Unwilling to risk the flashlight and a premature discovery, Vicki grabbed Celluci’s shoulder and allowed him to lead her down the hall. To her surprise, moving in what was to her total darkness was less stressful than the peep show the flashlight had offered. Although she still listened for approaching footsteps, the accompanying tension had lessened. Or maybe, she conceded, her grip tightening slightly, it’s just that now I have an anchor.
When they reached the first intersection, even she could see the way they had to go.
The harsh white of the fluorescent lights spilled out through the open door and across the corridor.
Vicki felt Celluci’s shoulder rise as he reached beneath his jacket and she heard the unmistakable sound of metal sliding free of leather. Up until this moment, she hadn’t realized he’d brought his gun. Considering the amount of trouble he could get into for using it, she couldn’t believe he’d actually drawn it.
“Isn’t that just a tad American,” she whispered, lips nearly touching his ear.
He drew her back around the comer and bent his head to hers. “What Dr. Burke neglected to mention,” he said in a voice pitched to carry to her alone, “was that there’s something else wandering around in here besides a mad scientist and your uh . . .”
“Mother,” Vicki interjected flatly. “It’s okay.” Her feelings were irrelevant to the situation. And I’ll just keep telling myself that.
“Yeah, well, something else killed that kid and we’re not taking any more chances than we have to.”
“Mike, if it’s already dead, what good will shooting it do?”
His voice was grim as he answered. “If it died once, it can die again.”
“So what am I supposed to use, strong language?”
“You can wait here.”
“Fuck you.” And under the bravado, fear. Not alone. Not in the dark. Not here.
They made their way to the open door. Vicki released her hold on Celluci’s shoulder at the edge of the light. “Give it a five count.” His breath lapped warm against the side of her face, then he darted across the opening.
The next five seconds were among the longest Vicki had ever spent as she closed her eyes, leaned her head back against the wall, and wondered if she’d have the courage to look. On five, she swallowed hard, opened her eyes, and peered around and into the room, conscious of Celluci across the doorway mirroring her movements.
Even with lids slitted against the glare, it took a moment for her eyes to stop watering enough for her to focus. It was a lab. It had obviously been in use recently. It had just as obviously been abandoned. Eight years with the police had taught her to recognize the telltale mess left behind when suspects had cut and run.
Cautiously, they moved away from the door, slowly turned, and simultaneously spotted the isolation box, humming in mechanical loneliness at the far end of the room.
Vicki took two quick steps toward it, then stopped and forced her brain to function. “If this is the original lab, we know Catherine moved Henry away . . .”
“So Henry’s not in that box.”
“Maybe it’s empty.”
“Maybe.”
But neither of them believed it.
“We have to know for sure.” Somehow, without her being aware of it, Vicki’s feet had moved her to within an arm’s length of the box. All she had to do was reach out and lift the lid.
. . . and lift the lid. Oh, Momma, I’m sorry. I can’t. She despised herself for being a coward, but she couldn’t stop the sudden cold sweat nor the weakness in her knees that threatened to drop her flat on her face.
“It’s all right.” It wasn’t all right, but those were the
words to say, so Celluci said them as he came around her and put one hand on the latch. This, at least, he could do for her. “You don’t have to stay.”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” She could be a passive observer, if only that.
Celluci searched her face, swore privately that someone would pay for the pain that kept forcing its way out through the cracks in the masks she wore, and lifted the lid.
The release of tension was so great that Vicki swayed and would have fallen had Celluci not stepped back and grabbed her. She allowed herself a moment leaning on the strength of his arm, then shook herself free. From the beginning, she’d declared she was going to find her mother. Why am I so relieved that we didn’t?
Thick purple incisions, tacked closed with coarse black thread, marked the naked body of the young Oriental male in an ugly “y” pattern. A collar of purple and green bruises circled the slender column of the throat. Plastic tubes ran into both elbows and the inner thigh. Across the forehead, partially covered by a thick fall of ebony hair, another incision appeared to have been stapled closed.
Over the years, both Vicki and Celluci had seen more corpses than they cared to remember. The young man in the box was dead.
“Mike, his chest . . . it’s . . .”
“I know.”
Two steps forward and she was close enough to reach over the side and gently touch her fingertips to the skin over the diaphragm. It was cold. And it rose and fell to the prompting of something that vibrated beneath it.
“Jesus . . . There’s a motor.” She withdrew her hand and scrubbed the fingers against her jacket. Raising her head, she caught Celluci making the sign of the cross. “Dr. Burke never mentioned this.”
“No. Not quite.” He shifted his gun to his right hand and slipped it back into the shoulder holster. It didn’t look like he’d be needing it right away. “But something tells me we’ve finally found Donald Li.”
The young man’s eyes snapped open.
Vicki couldn’t have moved had she wanted to. Nor could she look away when the dark eyes tracked from her to Celluci and back again.