by Lee Killough
The rationalization gave him little comfort.
He made a show of going to the locker room and calling good night to the clerk on returning. In the bunk room he pulled a dark, long-sleeved shirt over his t-shirt and jeans. He decided against locking the door from the inside. Some deputy needing a piece of equipment could still enter with a key. He pulled back the sheet on the bottom bunk, rumpled the bed, and punched the pillow to make it appear he had been sleeping and gotten up for a minute. He left his boots beside the bed and the raincoat draped over the footboard. They would not expect him to leave without those.
He slipped out and across the squad room, keeping low, then followed the corridor to the rear entrance. Wrench. Outside he peeled the SO emblems from the car and drove to the street behind the hospital, parking where the car disappeared in the shadows.
Almost 11:00. Garreth drank half a pint of blood. Too bad it could not be alcohol. A stiff shot would help about now. He raced across the grass for the hospital...passed through the ground level fire door at the same end of the building as the security rooms...climbed to the second floor. And sat down on the stairs to wait. Steeling himself for what had to be done. Giving his feet time to dry. He needed no wet footprints on the tile betraying the presence of another person.
The seconds ticked away. His mind ticked, too. There might be periods when no one watched the security room monitor but he could count on it only during the shift change, when everyone should be in report. He hoped.
At 11:00 he eased open the door to the floor and peered toward the nurse’s station. Nurses and aides around it trailed across the corridor to their conference room. Had someone remained in the station watching the monitor? He had to hope not.
Heart thundering he dashed into the corridor and flung himself at the security room door. Wrench...hit the inner door, wrench, with barely a pause between. The cumulative effect of the two passages staggered him. Not giving himself time to recover, however, he snatched the sleeping girl from the bed and hauled her into the blind spot below the camera
She felt small and fragile. An illusion. Remembering Maggie and the attacks on local officers, he took a firm hold on her forehead the back of her head, and tensed to wrench her neck.
Suddenly he stood not in the hospital room but in sheets of fire, staring through a tall window at the girl, her hair boyish and redwood colored, braced angrily before the albino, her fangs extended, while the albino stared down at her with murderous fury in his face and red eyes.
A moment later the vision vanished. He released the girl’s head and caught her under the arms, heart leaping. Did the vision mean she could lead him to the albino...that she would if she lived? But what a dangerous burden she made in the process. Could he afford the risk?
Voices rose in the hall. “She was in the bed a minute ago. She can’t have left the room so she must be under the camera.”
The lock turned in the outer door.
Garreth swore...stared down at the girl. He had to decide now. The vision flickered through his head again. Oh, hell; he might as well trust his grandmother’s gift.
Heaving the girl over his shoulder, he charged across the room and hurled himself at the window. For a tense moment he feared he misjudged its strength. Then it gave before him, glass splintering, mesh stretching and snapping. Amid a rain of shards, they plunged out into darkness.
Chapter Twenty-six
They seemed to fall for an eternity before the ground jumped to meet him. He landed prepared to collapse and hit rolling, but the lawn gave beneath him like a wet sponge and Garreth found himself still upright without pain--nothing broken!--albeit sinking into a squat. Someone shouted from the broken window. Garreth let gravity finish pulling him into the squat, then used the flexion of his knees and hips to rebound to his feet and sprint for the car.
As he shoved the girl across into the passenger seat and drove away, his mind raced. Had the rain helped hide him or had they seen him? If so, how clearly? Even assuming he had escaped cleanly...now what did he do with the girl? He had to stash her somewhere secure but close and make it back to the SO in time to be “wakened” by news of her escape. The seconds ticked off in his head like a bomb. He had to hurry! Any minute someone would start knocking on the bunk room door.
Only one hiding place occurred to him...the Porsche.
On a dark side street he moved the seats forward and wedged her in behind them on the floor, covering her with the blanket he kept in the luggage compartment up front for emergencies. Her bent knees made a hump in the material but its dark color should help keep her invisible to all but a close scrutiny.
Downtown, the parking lot behind the courthouse sat almost empty, as it had his last two trips here. Sechrest’s deputies, like Reichert’s, apparently drove their units home. But the handful of current vehicles included two patrol cars that had not been there before. If the graveyard shift had left on patrol, the two units must belong to deputies on the swing shift finishing up reports. He would have to find a way past them.
He parked in the far corner beyond a battered International Travel all he noticed his first trip in tonight. Any accusations that his car had not been in the lot around 11:00 he could counter with the claim that it had simply been hidden by the Travel all.
After slapping the Bellamy County emblems back on his doors, he started around the edge of the lot toward the SO’s rear entrance...but dropped flat as two deputies banged out through the door toward their patrol units. He lay motionless until they peeled out of the parking lot, then dashed for the rear entrance. Outside he paused just long enough to make sure no footsteps approached on the other side, then pushed forward. Wrench. No one in sight. Keeping low, he raced for the squad room.
The rapping warned him before he reached the doorway. He stopped short. Someone knocking on the storeroom door?
A male voice confirmed that. “Hey, Mikaelian! Wake up! Hell...what does it take to wake this guy?”
He did not sound like someone asking himself the question.
The voice of the clerk said, “Just go in and shake him.”
The clerk. Damn. The man at the door could be “persuaded” into believing he found Garreth in the bunk room, but that would not work with a witness at the other end of the room. Time for plan B.
He stripped off the dark shirt, peeled out of his jeans.
He heard the doorknob turn.
“No wonder he didn’t answer. He isn’t in here.”
In t-shirt, boxers, and bare feet, Garreth strolled into the squad room, kicking his clothes to the side. He had to gamble on the deputy not noticing his wet hair. “Hi. I’m Mikaelian from the Bellamy SO in Kansas. Your sheriff’s letting me crash--” He broke off with raised brows as the husky deputy in the doorway turned to him. “What’s the matter?”
“I was waking you to tell you that your suspect’s escaped from the hospital.”
Garreth stiffened. “Son of a bitch! I thought that was supposed to be a security room! How’d she manage it?”
“Apparently she broke the window and jumped.”
“No shit? A security window? Who’s out hunting her?”
“Both patrol units on First Watch and most of the ones from Third Watch. The PD’s helping, too.”
“Let me get some clothes on.” He rummaged in his bag for dry jeans and jammed his feet into socks and his boots. While shrugging on his raincoat, he caught the deputy’s eyes. “You won’t notice me picking up a bundle near the door and carrying it out with us.”
They walked out the squad room with Garreth kept the deputy between himself and the front desk, using him for cover while retrieving his shirt and jeans.
At the hospital a Sheriff and PD car sat at the entrance while up on the floor the deputy and officer from those units stood at the doorway of the security room with a nurse. Garreth joined them, showing his ID. In the room, hospital maintenance personnel taped a sheet of plastic over the shattered window to keep out the rain.
“I don’t
understand how she broke the glass,” the deputy said.
The nurse shrugged in bafflement. “Especially someone her size. You can’t even throw a chair through these.”
“Won’t the tape show you what happened?” the PD officer asked.
Garreth’s heart skipped. If they taped after all, he was toast.
To his relief the nurse said, “The sheriff didn’t ask us to tape her, so we didn’t.”
The deputy sighed. “At least she ought to be easy to spot in a hospital gown. She can’t have gone too far.”
“Did you see which way she went?” Garreth asked.
The nurse shook her head. “We couldn’t see much of anything outside.”
So he had dodged that bullet, too.
“I’m just surprised she could jump and not break something,” the nurse added.
The deputy grimaced. “I think she’s pretty well proven herself one tough little bitch.”
“Yeah. The sooner she’s found the better,” Garreth said. The sooner he moved her out of his car the better for him.
But...where to take her? It had to be a somewhere he could leave her unattended and not risk discovery. Thinking back through his tour of the town he thought of the Greek temple mausoleum in the cemetery. It seemed one place unlikely to be searched.
He drove over to check it out. Gates closed entrances on the east and south, and the cemetery wall stretched unbroken along the north side. He would have to park on a side street and carry the girl in. That bothered him. Even at night in the rain he might be spotted. Could there be a way in on the west side?
No street bordered it there. Instead, the western wall abutted the grounds of private homes. What he could see of the wall here looked unbroken, too, and lined with tall trees screening the cemetery from the view of the homes. Two east-west streets dead-ended at the wall, where bricks a slightly different color than the rest of the wall told him entrances used to exist.
But a third street, narrowed to a lane by a hedge encroaching on one side and rhododendrons on the other, did lead to an entrance. Horse and carriage size, Garreth estimated. Or backhoe-wide. An equipment shed inside suggested why they left this entrance...blocked only by a padlocked chain.
Seeing crumbling mortar around one end of the chain, he wiggled it experimentally and without too much surprise found the anchor bolt could be pulled from of the wall. Someone before him had worked it free... at a guess, a hormone-driven adolescent male from one of the neighborhood homes, seeking a secluded place to bring his dates.
Following the drive toward the Greek temple, he discovered more mausoleums along two branching drives, family ones built into the slope. He stopped to check out one group hidden from the street by trees and the curve of the hill. The first two proved unsatisfactory, with their vestibules in front of end-on vaults fully visible from the door. The vaults in a third stretched lengthwise three deep into the hill. A possibility to consider since the passage between the two sides faded into shadow beyond the middle of the second row, making anyone at the rear invisible. He almost dismissed a fourth, too, because its graceful marble angels supported a portico–bearing the name Ward-- no more than eight feet high and six wide. Suggesting a single-occupant structure. Still, he peered through one of the small beveled glass panes in the brass door.
And to his surprise saw not a vault but stairs disappearing downward. To underground vaults?
Hoping, he leaned into the door. Wrench.
Yes, underground vaults. The steps descended to a chamber with vaults on three sides.
Garreth regarded it with satisfaction. Roomy, invisible from the door, and unlikely to have visitors. According to the vault dates, the last interment occurred in 1947, with four vaults remaining unoccupied. Judging by the dust on a granite meditation bench, no one had even visited here in years. The air smelled wonderfully of damp earth. Perfect.
But he needed the door open to bring the girl in. Foremost, he wanted to avoid, for as long as possible, letting her learn she could pass through doors, and he was unsure he could carry her though.
Once outside again he examined the lock. An old-fashioned rim lock, it probably had at most four tumblers and opened with a massive brass key. Not a lock difficult to pick, but needing brute strength to turn. Especially considering how long it must have sat unopened.
Garreth brought his tool kit from the car, thankful the portico kept him from having to work in the rain. After spraying liberal amounts of lubricant into the keyhole, especially up between the tumbler plates, he began probing with a length of baling wire, a tool he had discovered as ubiquitous as trailer hitches in Baumen, and as indispensable as duct tape. He felt for the tumblers, counting them as he tried jiggling them, checking the damage of rust and dust. Four tumblers. The farthest one shifted a little. The other three seemed frozen.
A clock ticked in his head. The portico and angel pillars shielded him from sight, but who could say when a patrol unit hunting the girl might sweep the cemetery with a spotlight and see the car. He had to force patience...to keep spraying lubricant and working the tumblers. Sweating every minute.
An eternity later, complaining, the plates began scraping loudly past each other. At least the generous tolerances let him feel where each plate cleared the stop inside, which let him bend his wire to the configuration of the key. With the wire bent and stiffened with duct tape, he tried the lock.
In vain at first. The reluctant lock wanted to twist the wire. Garreth took a breath, sprayed in more lubricant...worked his “key” gently. Finally, to his profound relief, all the tumblers rose clear of the stop and with more screeching of metal, the bolt slid back. The door opened.
He checked his watch. It had taken thirty minutes. The ghosts of burglars past were laughing their asses off in the Great Beyond.
Hurriedly, he brought in the girl, followed by his tool kit, pallet--on which he laid the girl--and a couple of pints from the cooler. Then he coaxed the door locked again and passed back through.
Downstairs he switched on the light from his tool kit and set it on the bench with its tilting head pointed down at on the girl. Sitting cross-legged beside her, he took a minute to drink in the sensations of the earth surrounding him beyond the concrete walls...sweet, soothing, refreshing. His next home, he decided, should be underground. Then he shook himself back to business. “Valerie. Valerie, wake...up.”
She stirred. “Ice?”
He blinked. What did she want ice for? A moment later a thrill shot down his spine. Not ice...Ice. A name. A name that described one person perfectly...the albino.
Her eyes opened. And instantly shut. When she opened her eyes again, she did so more cautiously, squinting, blocking the light with her hand. “Where am I?” Her nose wrinkled. “It smells like a cellar.” She turned to peer at the wall behind her...and jumped up with a squeak to back away from the vaults. “Those are--this is--”
“A fine and private place. Perfect for an undisturbed chat.”
She started to turn. “Who the hell are you? Chat about wha--” Suddenly she seemed to become aware that she wore just a hospital gown. Snatching it together behind her, she spun her back away from him.
He pulled off his raincoat and tossed it to her. “Here.” He needed her focus on him, not modesty.
She eyed him as she put it on and snapped the front, then scowled at him through her hair. “I know you. You’re the cop that knocked me out at the hospital!”
Her expression reminded Garreth of the picture on the Blue Steel Purgatory tape, and he realized why that member of the band seemed familiar. A relative...maybe her father? It could explain why she carried the tapes. “You want to tell me how I could do that while holding your wrists with both my hands?”
The scowl deepened. “How else did I end up unconscious? And look what else you did, you son of a bitch!” She pulled her hair away from her face, then baring her teeth, used her tongue to wiggle first one upper canine, then the other.
And suddenly he knew her name
. Rebecca Newman. With the scowl and her hair skinned back, she matched the National Clearinghouse photo. It was knowledge to keep for use at some strategic moment! Not that she probably called herself Rebecca now. He needed to learn that name...but without asking for it and ruining the illusion of being all knowing.
“And after you sock me you break me out of the hospital.” She crossed her arms. “Why? Is this where you pretend you’re my friend and say you want to help me?”
“No. I’m definitely not your friend, cupcake.” He relished being blunt with her, provoking a flare of annoyance in her eyes. “But I find myself having to help you so you can help me--”
Her contemptuous snort cut him off. “Help you? No. Fucking. Way.”
He repeated, “So you can help me find Ice.”
The sneer vanished with an indrawn breath. “How--” Her face blanked. “They sell ice at any convenience store.”
Very cute. “You know what I’m talking about, cupcake. This Ice is two-legged, albino, and kills cops. I want him.”
Her annoyance morphed into a smirk. “No you don’t. You might know his name but you don’t have a clue what you’re dealing with. Ice is the last person in the world you want to meet.”
He can destroy you. Despite the threat, Garreth felt a rush of relief. Finally. Now he knew. “Because he’s a vampire, you mean?”
She stared at him. “You know that? How can you? No one believes in vampires.”
“I do. How old is he?” That would give him a true picture of how much power he faced...how much danger.
The smirk returned. “Two thousand years.”
Cold shot through Garreth. Two thousand years. More than double Irina’s age. Did he stand even a chance against someone like that?
“He’s been everywhere.” She sat down on the end of the meditation bench and leaned toward him, expression smug. “Ice rode with Genghis Khan and knew Ivan the Terrible and Louis the something, the Sun King. And he was a general in the Roman army in Nero’s Rome and knew all the famous artists like Botticelli in Florence. He’s got millions stashed away in Swiss bank accounts.”