by J. R. Rain
“Can’t please everyone,” I said to Cindy.
“No.”
“Want some chocolate?” I asked.
“Mmm, sounds yummy.”
We ducked into The Chocolatiers. A massive peanut butter cup for me and a sugar-free almond rocca for Cindy.
“Sugar-free?” I asked, when we stepped outside again.
“You can’t taste the difference.”
“Sure.”
“Plus it’s half the calories.”
We sat down on a bench under an awning and ate our chocolate and watched the rain.
“How’s Derrick doing?” asked Cindy.
“His family is moving east. Hard to have a normal life after being accused of murder. Kid will be looked at differently, no matter how innocent he is. UCLA is interested in giving him a scholarship.”
“Did you have anything to do with that?”
“I happen to know a few people there.”
“So your work here is done?”
I looked away, inhaling deeply.
She reached out and placed her hand on top of mine. It was warm and comforting.
“You’re thinking of your mother,” she said.
I kept looking away. “Her killer is still out there.”
The rain continued to fall. She continued holding my hand. She squeezed it.
“You’re going to find him,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t know what I will do to him when I find him.”
“Does that worry you?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then it doesn’t worry me.”
Chapter Sixty-five
Jack was drinking a non-steaming cup of coffee. I was drinking a bubbling Coke. The dining room was empty. A very large teenage boy was filling some straw containers behind the counter. Minutes before closing.
I was toying with the scrap of folded paper.
“One thing I don’t get,” I said, turning the paper over in my fingers, “is why you always blow on your coffee. I mean, couldn’t you just snap your fingers and it would be instantly cool? Or, a better question: how is it even possible that God could burn his lips?”
“That’s more than one thing,” said Jack.
“You’re not going to answer, are you?”
He drank more of his coffee. His eyes were brownish, maybe with a touch of green. Maybe. What the hell did I know? I was colorblind.
“Could you heal me of my colorblindness?” I asked.
“Heal yourself.”
“Heal myself?”
“Sure. I gave you a big brain for a reason.”
“They say we’re only using ninety percent,” I said.
“If that much.”
We were silent some more. I was thinking about my big brain...surely mine was bigger than most, since I was always being told I had a big head. Or were they referring to something else? I held up the folded piece of paper.
“I’m going to open this now,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve wanted to for quite sometime.”
“I’m sure you did, but you didn’t.”
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to find the answer myself.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
The kid behind the counter walked over to us and told us we had five minutes. I said sure. Jack didn’t say anything. And when the kid was gone, I unfolded the paper and looked down at the single word: Dana.
“Lucky guess,” I said.
Jack laughed.
“So why did you come to me,” I said. “Why are you here now?”
“You asked me here.”
“Fine. Now what do I do with you?”
“Whatever you want.”
“I’m thinking about writing a book.”
“Good for you,” said Jack.
“It’s going to be about this case.”
“Would make a good book,” said Jack.
“I want to put you in it,” I said.
“I’m honored.”
“That is why you came to me, right?”
“That is for you to decide.”
We were silent some more. The kid behind the counter was turning off the lights, banging stuff loudly so we’d get the hint.
“I feel we’ve only scratched the surface here,” I said.
“That’s why there’s something called sequels.”
“You mentioned something earlier about loving me.”
“I did.”
“So do you really love me?” I asked, a hell of a strange question for one grown man to ask another grown man. Especially a man as tough as myself.
He said, “More than you know, my son. More than you know.” He reached out and put his hand on my hand. Radiating warmth spread through me instantly. “I am with you always. Remember that.”
Something caught in my throat. “Then why do I feel so alone?”
“Do you feel alone now?”
“No,” I said. The lights went out, and we got up together from the table. “No, I don’t.”
The End
Knighthorse returns in:
The Mummy Case
Jim Knighthorse Series #2
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Return to the Table of Contents
THE VAMPIRE WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO
The Spinoza Trilogy #1
Copyright © 2011 by J.R. Rain
All rights reserved.
Dedication
To my lovely sister, Bekky.
Acknowledgments
Once again, a big thank you to Eve Paludan and Sandy Johnston for all their wonderful help.
The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo
Chapter One
Her name was Gladys Melbourne and she was crying.
We were sitting together in my office, with the door closed. Outside, the street sounds came through my partially open window. A particularly loud Harley rumbled by so loudly that the fillings in my teeth nearly rattled out.
Gladys ignored the Harley. She was looking away and wiping tears from her high cheekbones.
Women crying in my presence wasn’t something new to me, and so I calmly waited it out. Meanwhile, my natural shyness to people in general prevented me from saying the soothing words she no doubt needed to hear.
I waited. She buried her face in both hands. I looked at the ceiling and sat back in the chair, and silently wished I could find it within me to say something, anything.
She continued crying.
Outside, a street person yelled something. I thought I recognized the voice. I knew most of the street people. When I’m feeling generous, especially when work is steady, I usually gave abundantly to the local homeless.
A bird squawked outside my window. I was sure it was a crow, although it could have been a raven. I wasn’t sure which was which, although both struck upon some primal fear within me. Perhaps in a past life I had my eyes pecked out by such a bird. A black, soulless, pitiless bird.
Gladys’s shoulders quaked. A tissue appeared in her hands. She used it to dab her eyes. She looked up at me and I promptly looked away.
Her breathing was harsh and ragged. She was still not ready to speak.
On my desk was a closed laptop, a clear plastic cup of half-finished iced coffee, a pen, my car keys and my cell phone. Next to the laptop was a picture of my dead wife and son. As I looked at them, I smelled again their burning flesh. I would never, ever forget the smell, or the image of their blackened bodies. I kept the pictures up on my desk to remind myself that they were so much more than blackened lumps of charred flesh.
But it never worked. Always, I saw them burning, burning.
I closed my eyes. The smoke stung them all over again.
As I rubbed my eyes, I finally remembered the forgotten dream I had had just this morning, the haunting memory of which had been plaguing me all morning. And so now the memory of it came
blazing back into my consciousness, awakened by the woman’s heartbreak and the psychosomatic scent of burning flesh....
I was in a forest with my son, holding his hand. Massive tree trunks punctuated the earth, rising up like magnified hair follicles. A sticky mist lay over the forest and the sound of falling water was nearby. We were heading to the falling water. I sensed our great need for water. For hydration. No, I sensed it for my son’s benefit. He needed the water. Desperately. And now I was recklessly crashing through the forest like a bear drunk on fermented elderberries, dangerously towing my son behind me. I looked down at him but his sweet, angelic face was blank, his lips parched and dry and white. The forest opened into a clearing and there before us was a beautiful waterfall, cascading down through the mist as if falling from heaven itself. And when I looked down again, I saw that I was holding my son’s dead and blackened hand. The water crashed idyllically just a few feet away. I held his scorched hand and sat in the high grass and wept.
The woman in front of me was breathing normally again. When I came back from the forest, when my wet vision cleared again, I saw that she was watching me curiously. I tried to smile, but smiling never came easy to me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “I need help.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry for crying.”
She needed encouragement. She needed to know it was okay to cry in my presence, that everything would be okay. I said nothing. I was never very good at small talk. I was never very good at much, and sometimes nothing was okay. Sometimes things crashed around you, and they kept on crashing for years to come.
“My granddaughter ran away,” she said. “Step granddaughter.”
I sat back. I thought the woman was going to cry again, but she held it together. Thank God. Instead, she gazed at me steadily, her wet eyes unwavering.
She went on, “I was told you specialize in finding the missing. Missing children, in particular.”
I did find them. And sometimes I found them dead. But I did not tell her that. With a runaway, there was still hope.
“When did your granddaughter run away?” I asked quietly, taking out a notepad and a pen from my top drawer.
“A week ago. Six days ago, to be exact.”
“Who told you I could help you?”
“Detective Hammer. He said it wouldn’t hurt to see you. That you had a knack for this sort of thing.”
I did. When it came to finding missing children, one needed to be dogged and relentless. No stone left unturned. Having good instincts helped, too. But the funny thing about instincts was that one never knew when they would kick in. That’s where the dogged and relentless part came in.
“How old is your granddaughter?” I asked. Always use the present. Never, ever refer to a child in the past tense.
“Sixteen or seventeen. I’m not really sure. Her birthday is next month.”
My son’s birthday would have been next month, too, but I didn’t say anything about that. There was enough heartache in this room without bringing that up. He would have been thirteen. Instead, he died when he was nine.
At the thought of my son’s birthday, my breath caught, and I was briefly back in the forest, sitting in the short grass, holding his charred hand as the nearby water bubbled with life.
Presently, a small breeze made its way through the open window behind me. Los Angeles smelled of exhaust and oil and burned rubber.
“Has she run away before?” I asked.
“No.”
“Do you have a photo of her?”
“Yes.”
She reached into an oversized purse and pulled out a manila file. “At Detective Hammer’s suggestion, I put together a package for you. Everything about her is in here, pictures, friends, her likes and dislikes, favorite places to hang out, anything and everything I could think of. There’s even a list of her favorite books. All vampire books.”
I took the proffered file, flipped through it. I got to the list of vampire books. She seemed to prefer one author in particular.
“Thanks,” I said. “This will help a lot.”
Gladys nodded. “I have some more information that might help you, Mr. Spinoza.”
I waited.
“Her parents were killed three years ago. She’s lived with us off and on ever since.”
She waited, as if expecting a reply. None came. She went on awkwardly. “Yes, well, there’s something else you should know about her. Something that worries me a great deal.”
I waited some more, although I did nod encouragingly.
She went on, “Veronica is a little...different.”
“Different how?”
I was imagining a slower child. Perhaps one with autism. Some sort of disability. Gladys was looking increasingly uncomfortable. She took in some air and leveled her stare at me.
“She sort of lives in her own fantasy world, Mr. Spinoza.”
“What does that mean?”
“She calls herself a slayer.”
“A slayer?” I said. “As in dragons?”
“No, as in vampires.”
Gladys blinked slowly, but didn’t look away. I think my mouth might have opened, but no words came out. Finally, I nodded.
“You mean like in Dungeons & Dragons,” I said. “Or that World of Witchcraft, or whatever it’s called. A slayer is like her—what do they call it?—her avatar?”
Gladys smiled gently. “I’m not sure I understood half of what you just said, Mr. Spinoza, but what I do know is that she really thinks she’s a vampire slayer.”
“Do you have her on any medication?”
Gladys shook her head. “She won’t see a doctor, and won’t go to school.”
“So she just stays with you?”
“Yes.”
I thought about that. “How did you meet her, Gladys?”
“Veronica just...appeared at our house one day. Bloodied and in a horrible mess. She always refused to talk about where she came from or what happened to her. But I later understood her parents had been in a horrible accident.”
I rubbed my temples. If I had known that by putting a simple ad in the Yellow Pages I would be meeting the world’s whackos, I might never have gotten into this business.
Not true, I suddenly thought. Getting into this business was something I had to do. Needed to do. Looking for the missing was, in fact, the only thing I could do.
I asked, “Are you on medication, Gladys?”
“Many,” she said, smiling. “But not the kind you’re thinking of. I assure you, Mr. Spinoza, everything I have told you is true.”
“And this girl is sixteen?”
“Give or take a few years.”
“What does that mean?”
“She would never tell us her exact age.”
I thought about that. “When she appeared at your house, did you report her to the authorities?”
“She warned us that if we did, she would run away and we would never see her again.”
“And you didn’t want her to run away.”
“No. It was so...nice having someone in the house with us. Jack is in a wheelchair, you see, and she was always so helpful, even from the beginning.”
“You enjoyed her company,” I said.
“We loved having her around. She was a breath of fresh air, despite...despite her problems.”
“Problems?”
“You know, typical teenage stuff. Always sad, depressed. Of course, back then we didn’t know why she was so sad and depressed. But later we figured it was about her parents. We didn’t ask her too many questions. She didn’t like questions.”
“And you didn’t want her to run off because you liked her company.”
“We loved her company. We loved her. She was like a real granddaughter to us.”
“Do you have any kids, Gladys?”
“One. But we do not speak anymore. She disowned us decades ago. All over a fight. One single fight.”
An
d now she did weep again, although softer than before. I shifted uncomfortably in my chair, which squeaked under my considerable weight.
“Veronica was our last chance to do it right, and she was our gift from God.”
We were silent. Outside my office window, the streets of Los Angeles weren’t silent. I studied Gladys. She seemed sane enough. But I have been fooled before.
She went on, “Since we didn’t know her exact age, my husband and I agreed that she was at least eighteen, and so we felt comfortable about not reporting her. Of course, we would have preferred to contact the proper authorities, or her parents, but she wasn’t giving us many options. In the end, we wanted her safe and well fed and properly cared for.”
I nodded, wondering if Veronica’s best interests were really being considered. I looked down at my notes. “And Veronica has lived with you for the past three years?”
“Yes, sometimes.”
“Sometimes? What does that mean?”
“It means that sometimes she disappears for a few days and nights.”
“Days and nights?”
“Yes.
“Where does she go?” I asked, and already I was dreading the answer. My feelings of dread weren’t unfounded.
“Hunting vampires,” said Gladys. She said the words so calmly, so conversationally, so pleasantly, that I nearly burst out laughing. Hearing the words “hunting vampires” come out of this sweet, elderly lady nearly made me question my own sanity.
Maybe I’m the one going insane.
“That’s what I get for asking,” I said, mostly to myself. Gladys looked at me curiously.
“Excuse me?” she said.
I waved off my comment. “Never mind. So when she’s not out hunting vampires, where do you think she really goes? A boyfriend’s house? Parties? Weekend drinking binges in Vegas?”
Gladys shook her head to all of the above. “No,” she said. “I believe she really hunts vampires.”
“Of course you do.” I took in some air. I nearly asked her to leave my office. Nearly. “And she’s been missing a week?”