Blood Games

by Lee Killough

  Garreth grimaced. “Cute like scorpions. Look, if this Greenstreet doesn’t recognize the albino, maybe the albino used one of the females to steal the checks.” As he used them to collect blood from Maggie and him.

  Reichert shook his head. “There’s no indication they were with him until after Colby. He didn’t register them at the motel and no one interviewed there saw them, not even the guest who watched the suspect leave. We’re checking for runaways from towns along I-70 from Colby to Hays but so far we’ve come up empty.” He stood. “Like I said, I’ll let you know any new developments. So you take it easy and rest. Don’t worry. We’ll nail these turkeys.”

  But Garreth found himself brooding over whether the albino had been alone at the motel. He doubted that...because of the dog. A vampire by himself had no need to cut the poor beast’s throat, or even to kill it. He could suck the little blood he needed. Nor did killing it make sense for someone alone playing at vampirism. But a vampire would have to cut the dog to let his bitches share the blood. Alternatively, the theatricality of draining the dog’s blood fit with a vampire charade.

  Even aside from the dog, however...if the albino had picked up the females in the last few hundred miles, would he be willing to turn driving over to them, and trust them to go down alone to collect blood from two dying police officers? Even a vampire capable of exerting powerful control over humans would surely be more cautious than that with new human flunkies. Garreth frowned. No, seen or not, the females had to be at the motel.

  He slid out of bed and pulled the curtain around his bed--Spy on me now, old man.--then he put on a second hospital gown backward so he wore it like a robe, picked up his phone and snagged his boots out of the closet. After a quick check of the hall to be sure no nurse or aide saw him, he hurried to the stairs and down to and out the fire exit at the bottom. Daylight felt so heavy it almost drove him to his knees. He leaned against the door for support while calling Directory Assistance for the number of Colby’s Ramada Inn.

  After reaching the inn, he asked for the manager and introduced himself. “Your forged check there has become linked to the murder of a police officer here in Bellamy County. We need the name and phone number of the housekeeper who cleaned the check forger’s room so we can contact her for some more questions.”

  The manager hesitated a moment before answering. “Our police department has that information already. I’m sure if you’re who you claim, they’ll be happy to give it to you.”

  He hesitated to take that chance. Garreth pushed persuasion into his voice. “Listen to me. Listen.” Here in daylight and over the phone, he might have no power. It depended how suggestible the manager was. “Are you listening? Tell me if you’re listening.”

  In a faintly puzzled tone--confused by this sudden compulsion?--she said, “I’m listening.”

  This time she gave him the housekeeper’s name and number. Though she acted under compulsion, he thanked her, and asked her to forget the call.

  When he reached the housekeeper, he had basically one question. “Did Greenstreet sleep alone in that room?” Maids could always tell.

  Mrs. Muñez did not disappoint him. “No, he had someone else there, too. But I think they just slept. The beds did not smell like sex.”

  That disturbed him. If the albino were playing vampire, Garreth would have expected him to use the charade as a turn-on. So if sex did not figure in...only the blood mattered?

  Garreth felt again that blast of menace he had experienced on I-70...and it lingered with him as he walked back into the hospital and up toward his room. Whether or not the menace and the preference for blood over sex meant the albino was vampire, it reinforced the urgency of finding him. He brings death and pain. Had the sketch jogged the memory of the check victim in Cheyenne? What more could he be doing to find the bastard?

  Back in his room he found the curtain pushed back and the supper tray sitting on his bed table. The old man smirked at him. “You’re in trouble, young man. The nurse says you’re not supposed to be out of bed.”

  Screw you, old man. Garreth jerked the curtain around his bed again and slumped back against the pillow. Impossible as it was to sleep in, the bed at least gave him a place to quit fighting the crush of daylight while he thought. And a few minutes later he thought of “what more” and swore at himself for not remembering it earlier.

  He called the Sheriff’s Office. At the dispatcher’s sigh, he said quickly, “Don’t worry, Cheryl, I won’t ask you if the van or suspects have been located.”

  “Then...how can I help you?” Wariness cooled her normally perky voice.

  “Earlier the sheriff updated me on what he’s doing to put a name to the suspects and I just thought of a suggestion for him. It’s to contact NCIC and ask for an off-line search, sorting for items in which the suspect descriptors match our male suspect. They need a stated time period, so I’d say make it from April of this year to January three years ago. And of course we tell NCIC our query is relevant to a police officer’s death. If I’m repeating what you already know perfectly well, please forgive me. From what I’ve heard in your dispatches you probably know as much about contacting the data banks as any of the deputies.”

  “You wouldn’t being trying to butter me up with flattery, would you?” But her voice had warmed again. “I’ll make the call. The results go to Sheriff Reichert, of course.”

  “Of course. Although...I’d like to know them, too, please, if that’s no trouble.”

  She hesitated a moment. “It’s not much trouble.”

  “Oh...just one more thing.”

  Her voice went wary again. “You’re not going to be like that Columbo character are you?”

  He grinned. “No. The other thing is, I know Reichert faxed the male suspect’s sketch to Cheyenne. Could you send them the two females’ sketches, too? That check theft victim might as well have a look at all our--” He glanced up at the singing of curtain rings to see the floor nurse jerking aside his curtain, her lips so thin they had almost disappeared. “--our suspects. Call me at...” He gave her the cell phone number fast. “Gotta go. Thanks.”

  Another time he would have slunk down, regretting being so much trouble, but having this Nurse Ratched rail at him about some stupid doctor’s orders while Maggie’s killers escaped enraged him. He stared into the eye of the storm. “I walked down to the sun room. I don’t know how you missed seeing me there. No, I don’t remember Dr. Woodard telling me I couldn’t. Go ahead and report it.”

  After she left he stared at his reflection in the bed table mirror. He did look terrible...his skin almost as white as the bandage on his forehead, cheeks sunken, and eyes like bruises. Worse, he felt like hell and it seemed more than the usual daylight misery. Obviously the crash still affected him. Did he need more blood, even though he felt no hunger yet? Maybe he really did need to dump the old man’s plants into the bed so he could sleep.

  “Garreth, how are you?”

  He looked up to see his landlady Helen Schoning in the doorway. He hit the controls to raise the head of the bed and lay back against the pillow. “Better than I look. It’s good to see you.”

  She smiled. “It’s certainly good to see you. At first we heard you were dead. Shouldn’t you be eating?” She pointed at the supper tray.

  “Hospital food?” He shuddered. “No thank you.”

  She laid a hand over his. “I’m so sorry about Maggie.”

  Pain lanced through him. “Thanks.”

  “I called Martin to offer condolences and when I mentioned I’d be coming down to see you he asked me to give you a message. He says don’t worry about not being able to make it to the memorial service tomorrow because--”

  “Tomorrow!” Garreth frowned. Impossible. How could it be that soon in a homicide case? “The coroner can’t have released her body already.”

  “It’s a memorial service. Martin said when he has her ashes, he’ll bury them in a private ceremony at the cemetery, but not until you can be there.” She
bent down and picked up a gym bag Garreth recognized as his. “I brought you a robe and slippers, your toothbrush and electric razor, and some clothes for when they let you go home, since I’m sure the ones you wore yesterday aren’t fit to wear again.”

  Garreth grimaced. “No, they’ll be in ribbons in the ER trash.” Clothes! Yes! His ticket to freedom so he could really do something. He started planning his moves. “Thank you very much. What time is that memorial service?”

  She blinked. “One o’clock, but--you’re not thinking you can come, are you?”

  He made himself meet her eyes and give her a candid smile. “I just want to know so I can be there in spirit.”

  She stayed about half an hour giving him everyone’s best wishes and reporting how shocked and angry everyone was at what happened. The story had occupied the entire front page of the Telegraph last night and again today. It had been thirty years since Baumen had an officer killed in the line of duty.

  An aide picking up the supper trays interrupted, frowning at Gareth’s tray. “You didn’t eat anything.”

  He shrugged her off. “No. Go on, Helen.”

  “That’s about it. Oh, a girl with a foreign accent telephoned you last night. I saw the light blinking on your answering machine when I went up to your apartment to pack your things so I played back the message. I called the number she left and told her what happened to you. When I mentioned how at first we thought you’d been killed, she said someone ought to talk to your parents and your friends Lien and Harry before they hear the wrong information, too, then she said to tell you she’ll see you sometime in the next couple of days.”

  Garreth sat upright. Talk to his parents and Harry? God, yes! He crossed his fingers that some law enforcement friend of his father working for an agency in the Great Plains had not already offered condolences.

  As soon as Helen left, he called his parents.

  Fortunately word had not reached them. “So ignore rumors of my death,” he said. “I don’t know why people keep making this mistake. I’m fine except for cuts and bruises. I’ll be out of the hospital by tomorrow at the latest.”

  “Will you come home for a while?” his mother asked. “Surely they’ll have you on sick leave.”

  “I have to help hunt down the bastard who did this to Maggie.”

  “Now that’s the attitude I like to hear in a son of mine,” his father said. “Just be careful. And don’t do anything that will dishonor you or that badge!”

  “No, sir!” His father held that nothing on the job mattered more than personal honor and professional integrity.

  Word had reached Harry via another old partner, Vanessa Girimonte, who had gone on to law school and was now an assistant district attorney in Denver. “But Lien didn’t believe it. She seemed surprised I would and wouldn’t let me call your parents. She said--” Harry’s voice went apologetic. “You know how she’s always been into this mystic stuff, like with I Ching. Well now she’s--well, she said if you were dead your Grandma Doyle would tell her.” He paused. “I can see how we got excited and made a mistake when we found you in that alley with your throat mutilated, but why did they think you were dead this time?”

  “Because it was daylight, I got knocked unconscious.”

  After a moment of silence, Harry said, “What difference would daylight make?”

  Garreth sighed. Harry seemed to deal with what Garreth had become mostly by denial. “Never mind. Give my love to Lien.”

  Once he hung up, he carried the gym bag into the bathroom. For clothes Helen had brought him jeans and a polo shirt. Dressing took no time. While pulling on his boots he felt the sun go down and grinned as some energy finally seeped into him. At last! He picked up his bag and headed down the hall.

  As he passed the desk the nurses started. “Just what do you think you’re doing, Mr. Mikaelian?”

  “Signing myself out.” He saluted them. They should be glad to see him go.

  The one he had named Nurse Ratched hurried around the end of the desk to block his path. “Mr. Mikaelian, you can’t--”

  “I’m going by or over you. Your choice,” he said. When, after a moment, she stepped aside, he added, “There’s no point wasting any more of your time. I’m sorry to have been such a pain. Am I headed the right way for the office?

  In the office he signed a waiver absolving Emma Dorn Hospital of all responsibility for his health once he crossed their threshold, then walked into the night.

  Chapter Eight

  In the Law Enforcement Center behind the county courthouse, laminated glass stretched to the ceiling above the front counter the Sheriff and Bellamy PD shared. A clerk stood on the far side, talking through the one low opening to a citizen filling out a form on the counter. Garreth held his badge case up to the window. “Buzz me in, please?”

  She peered at the ID and reached below the counter. By the time he reached the end of the counter, the lock on the door in the adjoining wall had clicked open.

  Beyond, a corridor divided the wing, with the PD offices on the left, the SO’s on the right. In the SO main office Garreth headed for Dispatch, moving down the room between a couple of computer work stations and a counter with office machines and a tall rack of forms. Above the photocopier, his suspects’ sketches had been tacked to the cork surface of the partition. A faint odor of blood and hazelnut cinnamon coffee drifted over the glass topping the partition separating the office from Dispatch. He rapped on the glass.

  When the thirtyish woman inside--on this shift it had to be Cheryl–swivelled her wheelchair from her computer screens, he held up his identification. Her eyes widened in disbelief. “Mikaelian? But you’re--”

  He tried not to stretch the truth too far. “I was in the hospital, but they released me. Fate’s a bitch, isn’t she? My partner dies but I pretty much just walk away from that wreck.” No lie there at all! “I came in hoping that since Dan Seward lives in Baumen, I can catch a ride with him after the shift.” No lie there, either, as far as it went.

  Cheryl said, “I’ll see.” She swivelled back to her monitors. Moments later her voice broadcast from the scanner set on a shelf above the work stations. “Bellamy County Fifteen. Please public service 10-19.”

  Garreth set his bag on a desk by the partition, then sat on the edge of the desk. Waiting gave him a good opportunity for the main reason he had come down. “Do you have any results back from the off-line search?”

  She replied without looking around. “Not yet.”

  Searching those data banks for inactive information took time, he knew. Still, he grimaced in disappointment. “The sheriff said we had some hits from NCIC on the suspect description. Any idea where that printout is?”

  This time she glanced around. “Probably on his desk. Sorry.”

  Because Reichert’s office, located up on the second floor, would be locked. Not a problem for him, however.

  Garreth pushed off the desk. “I need to visit the restroom. If Seward calls in while I’m gone, will you just ask him if it’s convenient to give me a ride? If it isn’t, I’m sorry I’ve bothered him.”

  In the corridor, a PD officer came up the stairs at the far end. Garreth nodded a greeting and crossed the corridor toward the restrooms. But as soon as the officer turned in at the Patrol Division office, Garreth sprinted up the stairs. No lights showed in the offices along this corridor. Garreth stopped at the sheriff’s door, took a quick glance around to be sure he was alone, then leaned into the door.

  Wrench!

  He sagged against the inside of the door, grimacing. Lord he hated that sensation...as if everything in him jerked all directions at once. Though it and the twinge of guilt for trespassing were probably a small enough price to pay for access.

  With a deep breath to clear his head, he crossed to Reichert’s desk and began searching through the papers on it. Which did not take long. The NCIC printout he wanted sat in the first section of a file sorter. Glad he could read without the risk of turning on a light, Garreth sat
down in Reichert’s chair and scanned the printout.

  Oddball as he looked, the albino did not possess a unique description. Tall, thin, pale males had been involved in auto theft in Georgia and North Carolina and some armed robberies in Chicago and LA. Garreth could see why Reichert dismissed their suspect’s involvement, however. The most recent auto theft took place on Saturday, the same day the albino checked into the motel in Colby; the suspect in Chicago escaped on a bicycle after robbing ATM patrons; and the suspect in LA stuck up convenience stores with a Black partner. Yet, while not involved in these crimes, the albino must have a record somewhere. Garreth could not see the stolen checks as his first offense. Hopefully the off-line search found something useful.

  He returned the printout to the sorter and headed back downstairs to the office.

  Wheeling her chair from her screens, Cheryl gave him a thumbs up. “Seward says he’ll meet you here at the end of the shift. And the off-line results came in.” She rolled across to open her door and hand out the printout. “I called Sheriff Reichert and he’s on his way in.”

  Garreth sat down to read. The search gave them three hits. Credit card theft in Spokane two years ago. Person last seen with the victim of a suspicious death in Billings a year and a half ago. Bad checks in Albuquerque six months ago. All three looked worth checking out based on geographical location alone. The albino could easily have come north to Denver from New Mexico or south from Montana and Washington, passing through Cheyenne on the way. It bothered him, though, that except for this involvement in the suspicious death, the crimes seemed so petty for someone with vampire powers. Did that argue against the albino being vampire? On the other hand, Garreth had met vampires eking out their existence hustling on the streets in San Francisco.

  He tapped on the glass.

  The dispatcher held up her hand, gesturing for him to wait while she finished a dispatch. “...a hitchhiker about three miles north of Bellamy, reportedly making inappropriate gestures at passing motorists who don’t stop to help him.”