by Lee Killough
One no doubt called “Homesick Runaway.”
“Anything else in the billfold that might actually be useful?”
“How about this?” He handed her a small photo of the blonde female staring solemnly into the camera.
Maybe taken in an arcade photo booth. The same compartment held a similar shot of Valerie and a two-photo strip with the same background. The strip showing both girls mugging for the camera, looking for all the world like any teenagers hanging out at the mall. Urged by some vague impulse, he palmed the strip and Valerie’s photo.
Sechrest regarded the blonde female’s with satisfaction. “Nice find. This is a much better image for distribution than any from Gas ‘N More’s security tape.” She set it aside with the notebook and picked up the tapes. “Odd taste in music for someone her age. The Blue Steel Perdition albums have to be twenty-five years old.”
That would be about right. Garreth remembered the rock group...not for their music but the night he and his partner helped three other patrol units arrest the band and their party guests at the Mark Hopkins Hotel when the group began breaking windows and furniture in their suite. They dropped out of the music scene not long after that, he recalled. It did seem odd someone the girl’s age even knew about them, let alone owned probably the only albums they ever made.
Unless the albino had been a member of the band? Except none of faces scowling out of their shoulder-length hair in the photo on the back of the cassette cases was the albino’s. One face did seem familiar. Someone he saw recently. Where he could not remember.
“This other band I’ve never heard of.” She handed him the cassette.
Home-recorded, the title and band name written in a hard, angular hand. Cold shot through Garreth reading it: “Shades of Midnight” by Cenotaph. The tune Emma said he hummed Wednesday morning at the SO. It and the lyrics she remembered ran back through his head now...bringing the same sense of menace he felt then.
“Hello...Mikaelian...Earth calling!”
He blinked. “What?”
She shook her head. “You do zone out. I said, don’t you think it’d be a good idea about now to let your boss know what’s happened?”
Except what would Reichert want to do about him once he heard about the girl? He needed time and freedom to decide what to do with her.
“Mikaelian? Something wrong?”
“I’m just tired.” Under her stare he made himself reach for the phone. With luck, Reichert had left the office for the evening and he could just leave a message.
Reichert had indeed gone home, so Garreth left Sechrest’s number and gambled he had until morning to decide about the girl.
Five minutes later the phone rang. Sechrest answered, identifying herself. Then: “Yes, that’s correct. He called from here. I’ll put him on.”
Garreth swore silently. Reichert! So much for gambling.
Sechrest started to hand him the phone...stopped...listened with a puzzled frown. “Didn’t you send– ... Yes, here. ... He did, but he’s going to be fine. And...so is the suspect. ... Well, we thought she was...but she revived in the body bag, which is what Officer Mikaelian--” Something Reichert said cut her off, and after listening, she sent a sharp glance Garreth’s direction. With seeming casualness, she swivelled the back of her chair to him and dropped her voice. Not too low for his hearing, though her one and two word contributions to the conversation gave him little to listen to. Not that he had any trouble guessing the subject under discussion.
Garreth left to give her more freedom to talk and crossed the hall to the squad room. The best he could expect from Reichert, he estimated, was being ordered home. Probably not this instant, so he still had until morning to decide about the girl. But the choices all looked bad. Lose, lose, and lose.
Door Number One...follow the book and let them treat her like a human juvenile offender. Disaster! As soon as she realized what had happened to her she would be exploring her new powers. Worse than attacking anyone who tried to stop her walking away, she might attempt to drink from them. Between her hunger and inexperience, the result would be butchery. If she killed them, she did not know to make sure they stayed dead. Resulting in more vampires...but, with only a small inoculation of the retrovirus, not reanimated as rational beings, just mindlessly blood-hungry. Even if he were around to prevent that by cleaning up after her, a trail of bodies with broken necks would attract just as much attention. Scratch door number one.
That left him with two choices. The first...kill her. That idea tied his gut in knots.
So did his last choice, which violated just as many ethics and laws. Yet...if he could not afford to leave her to the criminal justice system nor bring himself to kill her, he had only one other course of action...become her keeper.
The choice carried a kind of justice. His blood created her. Irina said the trio were his responsibility. His greater experience in the life should help control her.
Yet thought of dragging her everywhere made him shudder. Aside from evading law enforcement, he had ground to cover and she would be like wearing leg irons.
* * *
Sechrest leaned into the squad room and crooked a finger at him. “Your boss wants a word with you.”
Did he hear an axe falling? Taking a deep breath, he crossed the hall to the sheriff’s phone. “Yes, sir?”
“Enough is enough.” To Garreth’s surprise Reichert did not sound angry...just hard and unyielding as steel. Or an axe. “All involvement with this case ends now. You don’t go near this suspect and in the morning you get your butt back here.”
Had he told Sechrest that? Probably. Which cut off authorized access to the girl. So anything to do with her now definitely crossed the line. The thought left a cold lump in him.
“Do I make myself clear, Mikaelian?”
What could he say. “Yes, sir. ” Though if he were off the case, Reichert no longer had the authority to order him anywhere. Giving him an idea. “What if I go home to California?” California, where Cameron Dark had been arrested...and might have acquaintances who remembered him. “My parents and old friends out there have been asking me to come and recuperate there.”
Reichert took several seconds to answer. “California. Why not. Fine.”
When he hung up, he turned to find Sechrest in the doorway. She said, “You might have told me your relationship to the case.”
He shrugged. “With the suspect dead it seemed immaterial.”
“Except now--”
The telephone rang. She answered it...listened, glanced thoughtfully at Garreth, said, “I’m on my way.” She hung up. “The girl’s awake. Let’s go.”
He wondered for a moment if he heard right. “Me, too?”
“You, too.” She grabbed her slicker off the coatrack. “Yeah, your boss took you off the case...but this piece of it is my case and according to him you’ve been running around the country gathering info on this trio. I may need some of it when I talk to her. You have to stay out of the room, but I want you listening in where you can feed me information and questions you think might be helpful.” She took off down the corridor. “Coming?”
He snatched his own raincoat off the rack and ran after her.
In ICU at the hospital, Sechrest frowned through the window of their suspect’s room. She lay curled on her side in the bed, the eyes tightly closed behind the curtain of hair falling over her face. “I thought you said she’s awake.”
The PD officer, a tall young women with hair shorter than Garreth’s and muscular arms revealing she spent her free time in the gym, said, “She is...but I think she’s hoping that if she sleeps long enough, or pretends to, this will all turn out to be a bad dream.”
If only it could solve the problem, Garreth reflected wryly.
Sechrest grunted. “Then it’s time to make her wake up and face reality.” She plugged in an ear piece and turned to a nurse. “Since I can’t you my own phone in here, I need to borrow a couple of yours.”
After a short hesi
tation, the nurse handed over hers and brought another from the desk.
Sechrest connected one to her earpiece and punched in the number of the other phone. When it rang, she connected and handed it to Garreth. “Let’s do this. Benton, come in with me.”
The PD officer nodded and followed Sechrest into the room.
Reaching the bed, Sechrest touched the girl’s shoulder. “August. I’m Sheriff Sechrest. Open your eyes.”
The girl did not move.
Sechrest sighed. “Ignoring us won’t make us go away. You’re in too much trouble. You can help yourself, though, by cooperating with us.”
No response.
Garreth said, “In Cheyenne she called herself Valerie Daniels.”
Sechrest leaned down near the girl’s ear. “Maybe you’d rather be called Valerie Daniels.”
That hit a nerve. The heart monitor beeped faster. The girl’s eyes popped open and Garreth heard her intake of breath as she twisted to stare up at the sheriff.
Sechrest straightened, nodding. “That’s right. We know about your games in Cheyenne.”
“And Billings and Colby,” Garreth said.
The sheriff echoed him.
The girl’s glance darted from Sechrest to Benton, her expression that of a trapped animal.
Sechrest leaned over the girl again. “We also know all about running those two officers off the road in Kansas...and drinking their blood.”
Reichert must have told her about that.
The girl’s eyes widened until they seemed to fill her face. Then she squeezed them shut and curled up on her side again, whispering, “I...don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Benton snorted.
Sechrest shot her an ice glance. Which did not reflect in her chiding tone of voice. “Oh, I think you do, Valerie. We know it was your boyfriend who actually ran them off the road but yours and Amber’s fingerprints were all over their car.”
The beeps on the heart monitor jumped. “Amber?” The girl jerked upright in bed. “She didn’t get away? Where is she? I want to see her!”
Sechrest stared down at the girl and Garreth watched her mind race, calculating how to use this. With barely a pause, she said, “After you answer some questions about your boyfriend.”
Now Garreth saw the girl’s mind working. She lay back again with a sly, streetwise smile. The heart monitor slowed. “Because Amber wouldn’t talk about him?”
If that response disappointed Sechrest, it did not show. “Because we always like corroboration of our information...hearing it from more than once source.”
The girl stiffened. “I don’t believe Amber told you anything. She’d never do that!”
“Someone had to tell us about drinking the officers’ blood.”
A light blazed up in the girl’s eyes.
“Watch out!” Garreth yelled.
Before the sheriff could react, the girl sprang like a cat for her, ripping loose from the monitors. “What did you do to her to make her talk!”
Sechrest jumped backward. Benton leaped between girl and sheriff, hand chopping toward the girl’s throat. But in a lightning move, the girl ducked, then as the officer’s arm passed overhead, came upright almost against Benton’s body and drove both hands into her chest. Benton flew backward to smash against the wall and collapse onto hands and knees, mouth gaping as she fought for the breath knocked out of her. The girl stared in astonishment from her hands to the officer.
Garreth and the nurse scrambled for the door. The girl’s pause gave Sechrest time to act. She charged at the girl’s back.
The girl whirled. Whether her arm swung out from the centrifugal force of the spin or she meant to strike the sheriff, her hand connected with a force that snapped Sechrest’s head sideways and catapulted her into the foot of the bed.
Still on the floor, Benton clawed for her pepper spray. The girl leaped at her.
As Garreth and the nurse burst through the curtain.
The girl’s reach for the pepper spray suddenly changed direction toward the officer’s hair, then finding it too short to hold, grabbed her by her shirt collar and duty belt...heaved around and flung her into the stunned sheriff.
It confirmed Garreth’s fears. In mere seconds she had discovered her strength and started using it. Now she charged the nurse and him, hands outstretched like battering rams, obviously expecting to batter them aside, too.
So much for maintaining distance from her. Garreth shoved the nurse to safety behind him, then caught the girl’s wrists. Anger flaring in her eyes, she jerked back...and stopped short, expression startled at not breaking free.
He used the moment their gazes met to trap her. “You’re not going anywhere.” He dropped his voice to a whisper only she could hear. “Go...to...sleep. Sleep...until...I...wake...you.”
She collapsed against him.
He carried her back to the bed. “Sheriff, Benton, are you all right?”
The two climbed to their feet. Sechrest rubbed a bruised cheek, grimacing. “Mostly.”
Benton’s bruises appeared more than physical. Angry color splashed her cheekbones. “I don’t fucking believe the way this kid tossed me around.”
Garreth eyed her. “Obviously you’ve never had to wrestle some druggie pumped on PCP.”
“Adrenalin will do it, too,” Sechrest said. “I’ve seen a man tear the door off a car at an accident scene to free his kid trapped inside. You’d swear he turned into the Bionic Man. What I don’t understand is what you did to her, Mikaelian.” She stared down at the girl.
He put protest in his voice. “I didn’t do anything, just grabbed her wrists. You saw me. She went out like a light.”
“A highly volatile young lady.” Sechrest turned to the nurse. “Get me a stretcher or wheel chair. I’m moving her to a security room.”
The nurse frowned. “Only the doctor can release her from ICU. Her vital signs are so low--”
Sechrest cut her off. “Anyone capable of throwing Officer Benton and me across the room has signs vital enough for me. Find a doctor fast because I’m moving her before she really hurts someone.”
The nurse had one there in three minutes. Five minutes after that they were on the second floor pushing the girl’s wheelchair into one of the hospital’s two rooms designed for psychiatric patients. While watching the nurse and aide put the girl in bed, Garreth glanced around, assessing the room, from the wire mesh in the window glass to the monitoring camera in the corner of the ceiling above the door. A room not so secure from him...except what did he do about the camera?
“Do you watch her from the nurse’s station?” he asked the nurse when they left.
She nodded, locking both doors. “The monitor is at the desk.”
They all went for a look. On the screen the girl twitched in her sleep. Garreth imagined the inner conflict between his order to sleep and her body’s desire to be up and prowling the dark. The wide-angle lens did not cover the area directly beneath the camera, he noted.
As off-hand as possible he asked, “Do you tape this?”
“We probably can, but I never have.” The nurse glanced at Sechrest. “Do you want to?”
She shook her head. “Just watch her. If there’s an emergency, call me. Otherwise I’ll be back in the morning to talk to her again. Benton, there’s no further need for you to stick around. Thanks, and sorry it got rough.”
Benton shrugged.
Sechrest had driven her own vehicle over this time. As she and Garreth headed back out front, she said, “There’s a cot at the office you’re welcome to use tonight.”
“Thanks, but I’ll just find a motel room.” Where no one would notice his coming and going. “What’s the best place?”
“The cot in our office. Our three motels and the bed and breakfast are all filled with fair exhibitors.”
Shit. He made himself smile. “In that case...thanks for the cot.” He would just have to deal with it.
Instead of returning to the office, though, he drove a
round town, letting the debate between the Lane and Maggie voices run in his head. He noted locations of the fairground, the high school, a cemetery up the street from the hospital with a Greek temple of a mausoleum dominating higher ground in the middle, a housing addition where footings and basements were being dug for some new homes, being poured for others. Seeing the muddy holes the rain had made of the basements, he realized what he was doing...hunting somewhere to take the girl, alive or dead.
I vote for dead, Lane’s voice whispered. Then it’s done with. Fini.
No! Maggie’s whisper protested. You can’t kill her, Garreth!
He sighed. “Well, I have to do something. You see how dangerous she is. And she isn’t even hungry yet.”
And once she has her appetite and teeth, came Lane’s satisfied whisper, and learns locked doors can’t hold her, well...won’t you have fun!
She had a point. He would not even have to hide the body, he realized. With the security rooms on the upper floor, if he smashed the window and dropped her out on her head, it would appear she had broken her neck trying to escape.
That’s my boy!
No, Garreth, please!
They made his head ache. He headed for the Sheriff’s Office, longing, for the first time in years, to sleep at night, to escape the debate.
The clerk buzzed him in from the front desk. “Sechrest said you’d be coming. The cot’s in the room at end of the far end there. The restrooms are off the locker room down the hall toward the rear entrance.
The “cot” turned out to be bunk beds sharing a storeroom with equipment shelves. Setting his computer case and carry-on bag on the top bunk, Garreth realized the foolishness of trying to sleep. It would give him no more escape than it did the girl. But maybe being here had an advantage over a motel. It gave him an alibi if any question came up about his whereabouts late in the evening. He did not have the code for the rear entrance and the clerk would testify that she had buzzed Garreth in just once, well before the suspect died trying to escape.
Only as the thought formed did he realize that subconsciously he had made his decision about the girl. He hated it, but between all the bad choices this solved the problem most definitively. She should have died hours ago anyway. What difference was there between this and shooting a vicious dog?