Gidion's Hunt
Page 11
He gave her the same box cutter speech he’d given his teacher.
“Gidion, I don’t have a box cutter, and it’s not like I can ask my parents to go with me to a hardware store to get one.”
“Good point.” He thought on that. “You’re definitely at the game Friday night?”
“I’m in the school marching band, so yeah, I get to go despite being grounded. Are you going to be there, or are you going to be out playing Batman?”
She was comparing him with Batman? Awesome!
“I’ll be there. I can bring you one of mine.”
“Just how many do you have?”
“I really have no—” He jumped as Page leaped up and ran down to the den. She started barking as if Satan had just pissed on the front lawn. “Tamara, I gotta go.”
“You all right?”
“Yeah, I’ll text you in a moment.” He hung up and scrambled out of the tub.
Page would bark if a flea farted across the street, but she had different levels of barking. Most of the time, she worked with a “kids-irritate-me” bark. Door-to-door salesmen received a more aggressive greeting from Page, because they had dared to invade her territory. Whatever just set her off had her flipping out. He made a cursory run of the towel over his body and then wrapped it around his waist. He turned off the music coming from his iPod and picked up the box cutter he’d left on top of the toilet.
He heard Page scratch and slam her body against the front door. Holy crap, she wanted a piece of something out there. She didn’t get this bent even when a stray dog tried to mark her territory. Whatever had her ticked, at least it was outside. He went to his room and threw on some underwear and then some dark grey sweats. One of Grandpa’s rules was to avoid fighting in the buff. Not only did clothing offer a layer of protection, but unless a person made a habit of it, it wasn’t easy to fight with certain body parts dangling about.
Gidion kept the lights off in the house. He went down to the den. Page’s barking and whining hurt his ears, but he didn’t try to shut her up. She was doing her job, and she wasn’t worth the poop that came out her hind end if she didn’t warn him of trouble.
He kept low and looked out the window. A silver Lincoln Town Car was parked across the street. He kept a record of every car he saw parked near his house. He knew this wasn’t one of the regulars.
Gidion sat in a chair by the windows. Even if anyone was watching him, they weren’t likely to see him move around inside as long as his lights were off. The staring match had begun, only in this game, the challenge wasn’t to see who blinked first. It was a question of who saw the other’s shadow move first. He couldn’t tell if anyone was in the Lincoln. The way Page was going off, you’d think someone was at the front door, but a look through the peephole had confirmed no one was there. He kept the front porch light on all night.
After fifteen minutes, he finally saw movement. At least one person was in the Lincoln. “Gotcha.” Tough to tell anything else, but that was enough. Given it was night, had he rated a vampire for a tail instead of a feeder?
He couldn’t just go out to the car and attack the guy. For all he knew, the dude wasn’t even here for him. He might be dropping off someone at the house across the street. Even if he was with the vampires, attacking him only tipped Gidion’s hand. He couldn’t solve this problem with a box cutter or a sword. Fortunately, he owned a more effective weapon for this.
Gidion moved back from the window and pulled out his cell phone. He knelt a little lower to keep the light of the phone from giving him away and dialed.
A woman’s voice answered his call. “Chesterfield Communications.”
“Yes, I’ve got a suspicious car parked in front of my house.”
“What’s the address, sir?”
“I think it’s in front of 9631 Capricorn Drive. It’s a silver Lincoln Town Car. There’s a guy sitting inside, and he’s been there for about an hour now.” Okay, so he fudged the time, but he didn’t want the lady rolling her eyes if he only said it had been fifteen minutes.
“Do you see any weapons or any sign he might be intoxicated?” the dispatcher asked.
“Not that I can see.”
“Did you want to talk to the officer when he gets out there?”
“No.”
“Your name?”
“Tim Drake.”
“All right, Mr. Drake. We’ll get someone out that way. If anything changes before they get there, just give us a call back.”
“Thanks.”
He turned the phone off. A minute later, a text appeared from Tamara. Crap. He’d forgotten his promise to text her. He sent her a message letting her know he was all right and gave her the description of the car in front of his house. He also gave her some advice on what to do if she saw a suspicious car in front of her house during the next few days and couldn’t reach him.
There are a few important details to making a complaint to the police about a suspicious dude in a car. First off, never exaggerate too much. Yeah, he could claim the guy had a gun or a knife. The cops would get there a lot quicker, but they’d also be more likely to call him back or try to figure out where he lived and confront him about making a false report. Cops don’t like being bullshitted. Second, he didn’t give his address. A well-meaning cop might come to his door when he responded, and that would out him as the one who called. No, he gave the address across the street from him. The false name? Well, in Gidion’s case, Dad monitored the Chesterfield Police radios when he was at work. If the Chesterfield dispatcher gave out the name of the caller, Dad would freak the minute he heard his name. Knowing Dad, he’d probably notice the mention of the street name and call or text to check on him. That was fine, because that would let Gidion know when the call had been assigned to an officer.
His phone beeped a few minutes later to let him know he’d gotten another text. There was Dad, right on cue.
‘Heard the dispatcher give out a call near our house. Everything okay?’
Page had calmed a bit by this point, reduced to low growls and pacing circles by the front door. ‘All good here,’ Gidion texted back. ‘What’s up?’
‘Suspicious car call.’
‘Nope, all good.’
A few minutes later, Dad sent a message to tell him good night. Gidion got ready for the cops after that. He pulled out a tripod and set it up right in front of the window. Then he put Dad’s digital camera on it. From there, it was back to the waiting game.
The first Chesterfield Police car arrived five minutes later and parked so that the front of his car was almost kissing the Lincoln’s fender. The cop lit up the inside of the Lincoln using a small searchlight mounted just above the mirror on the driver side door. The guy in the front seat covered his eyes with his forearm. The light made the dude’s pale skin look white as chalk. Definitely a bloodsucker, and he looked pissed.
“Smile nice for the police officer, fang face,” Gidion said. A second officer arrived less than a minute later, parking right behind the Lincoln, trapping it there.
Gidion turned on the digital camera and made sure the flash was turned off. Otherwise, he’d only get a picture of his reflection in the window. Didn’t need the extra light at this point anyway. The lack of a flash was why he had the tripod. Pictures taken without a flash could end up blurry if the camera wasn’t perfectly still, and he wanted a nice picture of his friend across the street.
“Say, ‘cheese,’ jerk.”
The cops went so far as to make the guy get out of his car. Even better for him. The most he’d hoped for was a picture of him in the car.
In the movies, this was where the vampire would kill the cops and then slip away. Fortunately, reality didn’t work that way. Kill a cop, and all a person would accomplish is bringing down a lot of hell. Police are a tight-knit group. Hurt or kill one, and every other officer, even the ones who don’t like the one hurt, would crack open every skull it might take to find the jerk responsible. Vampires didn’t mess with cops, unless the cop in
question figured out he wasn’t dealing with something human. Vampires didn’t jeopardize their secrecy.
Gidion took a few pictures, making sure the camera was set on the highest resolution. Would be nice if the cops held up the guy’s driver’s license for him, but even with the highest resolution setting, he wasn’t likely to make out anything useful from this distance. He got a good look at his new friend, though. Gidion pulled out a notepad and wrote down every detail he could: white male, short black hair, beard, tall—real tall. The guy wore a black leather, aviator jacket with one of those furry collars.
The cops stayed out there close to fifteen minutes. They didn’t arrest vampire dude. Sitting in a parked car in a place a person doesn’t live isn’t illegal—rude, but not illegal. The first cop car pulled off and the Lincoln disappeared right after him.
“Aw, leaving so soon.” Gidion laughed and petted Page’s chest. She was proud of herself, having scared away the “big bad” outside their house. He gave her a couple of dog treats for that.
The remaining cop car sat out there a little longer, probably to make sure the guy they’d run off didn’t come back. If he did return, Gidion was definitely going to call the cops again. Cops didn’t like dealing with problems twice in the same night. Do that, and after enough return trips, they’d find a reason to arrest somebody.
Gidion went upstairs and hooked up the camera to his computer. With any luck, he’d gotten his first look at one of the local coven’s members. Now, he just needed to figure out how to use this to his advantage.
Chapter Nineteen
Tracking someone’s movements used to require a nondescript car, keen eyes and an expandable bladder as tough as Kevlar. These days, tracking someone only required Internet access.
Gidion started with Facebook. A quick name search led him to a list of almost one-hundred-fifty Charles Finleys, but when he refined the search to Richmond, that took the list to just one guy. He had a nose the size and shape of Rhode Island, and his hair style screamed “going-bald-but-in-denial.”
His Facebook page exposed an unhealthy addiction for Farmville and other pointless games. Fortunately, the info section included a link to Charlie’s Twitter feed, and he updated his Twitter status with where and what he was doing as if the world’s survival hinged on his nightlife. Didn’t take Gidion long to figure out the guy went downtown almost every night. His favorite haunts were the Tobacco Company and Siné.
Wednesday, Charlie was hanging out at the Tobacco Company and thinking about getting his “waitress as a carryout order.” Given the guy’s looks, Gidion didn’t think Charlie would be bringing her home anytime soon. That gave him plenty of time to snoop around the guy’s place.
Charlie owned a ranch style house dressed in vinyl siding the shade of chain-smoker yellow. The yard, front and back, was flat, treeless and fenceless. There was no breaking into that house without being noticed. Fortunately, what Gidion wanted most wasn’t inside.
He passed the house one time to scope out the terrain just before sunset. As soon as the sun went down, he zipped his car into the driveway, got out and went straight for the back. He walked, despite the urge to run. Strangers running through people’s yards set off “nosey neighbor radar.” He found the trash can, blue and boxy, next to the back door. He flipped it open, pulled out the top two bags, flipped it shut and took both bags straight to the back of his car.
The smell was hideous. He hoped it wouldn’t rain tonight, because he was gonna have to leave his windows down all night if there was any chance of getting rid of the stench. His nose fought to identify the rotted odors, but he refused to let his mind make the connections. Charlie lived in the far East End, so the drive home required almost a half hour of nose denial.
Gidion didn’t waste any time getting the trash out of his car. He’d hoped he could take them inside, but that wasn’t happening. All the air freshener in Virginia wouldn’t mask Charlie’s refuse from Dad. He took both bags to the back porch and threw down a large plastic sheet. Next came his trusty box cutter and a liberal cut to one of the bags. Fast food bags, leftover chicken fried rice and a lot of things Gidion didn’t want to recognize spilled onto the plastic. He covered his mouth and nose with one hand while he picked at the pile of nastiness with a tree limb he’d picked up from his backyard.
A small bottle rolled free of the pile. “Iron supplements.” That was promising. Grandpa Murphy said some feeders went through iron supplements like candy, thinking it would somehow help them last longer, kind of like Viagra for blood donors.
He also spotted the leftover stems from beets and two empty containers of orange juice, more of the other helpful suggestions for blood donors you could find online. Feeders didn’t want to face the fact that it didn’t matter what they ate or drank, they’d eventually run out of blood and die. He wondered what Pete’s trash looked like these days.
Gidion went through the second bag of trash. He didn’t find any other obvious sources of iron or vitamin C. After digging with his stick, Gidion did find a matchbook with the “Old World” logo on the cover. He’d hoped there might be some address or phone number written inside the matchbook, but no such luck.
What was missing was any obvious sign of Band-Aid or bandage use. Vampires had a way of sealing their bite marks, something in their saliva, but after a lot of bites and repeated blood loss, feeders ended up with some pretty thin and weak skin.
Perhaps Charlie was in the early stages of donating his type O to the local vampire coven. Then again, he might just have an iron deficiency and a similar taste in night spots. Either way, Charlie’s trash didn’t offer any hints on where the vampires went to sleep at sunrise.
That’s when he found the rope. Nothing about the type of rope stood out, just that it was the half-inch thick variety. As he studied it closer, he realized a small spot little bigger than a thumbprint was soaked red. Blood? No way to be sure, but as he considered the length of the rope, he felt certain there was more than enough length to bind a person’s wrists. For all he knew, a ketchup packet in one of the fast food bags had burst and stained the rope. What he wouldn’t give for a CSI lab tech. The real question was what use Charlie had for the rope.
He’d have to ask Ms. Aldgate, but the question would have to wait until tomorrow. She hadn’t given him a phone number to reach her with yet. In hindsight, maybe knocking her phone into the James hadn’t been his brightest move.
A flash of headlights to his right caught his attention. His house sat on a corner, and the rays of bluish light crawled down the side street. The body of the car resembled a Lincoln Town Car, and while the sky had darkened considerably, he felt certain the car was silver. Had his visitor from the previous night returned? Gidion opted for discretion and folded the plastic tarp to gather up the trash. He dragged the borrowed trash to the green trash can on the far side of the house.
Just as he was about to walk back inside the house, headlights stroked the asphalt again. Unless silver, late model Lincoln Town Cars had gained in popularity, his visitor was taking a new approach to surveillance. His fanged peeping Tom wasn’t going to park across the street waiting for the cops to pay him a visit. This time, he planned to keep his car moving, probably circling the block. Gidion wouldn’t be calling Chesterfield Police to run off his pest tonight. He couldn’t move without the vampires knowing it. At least the bastard would burn through a lot of gas and money in the process.
Well, Grandpa Murphy had said he wanted Gidion to rest tonight. Looked like he was going to get his wish. That was all right. Gidion could put the time to good use. He already had plans that didn’t require him to leave the house.
Chapter Twenty
Sprouting fangs only changed a person’s dietary habits. According to Grandpa Murphy, Gidion’s dad believed becoming a vampire didn’t truly change a person. Certain habits were locked in place for the remainder of the bloodsucker’s existence. Learn what they were like in life, and a good hunter could exploit mortal weaknesses to send an
immortal to their final grave.
“Yeah, Dad was like one of those FBI, Quantico, serial killer profiler guys, Page.” He scratched behind his dog’s ear, and she curled up next to him in his bed. “Except, just for vampires.”
He loaded the pictures of his new shadow onto his laptop and started looking for useful details. Most of the pictures had produced fuzzy crap, but he’d taken close to four dozen snapshots of his new friend. That was the number one rule of photography: shoot far more pictures of a subject than you could ever need. He only needed one good image. He was rewarded with five for his efforts.
He’d gotten a good picture of the guy’s face. At least, Gidion wouldn’t have any trouble recognizing him. The real question was whether he was dealing with a member of the local coven or one of those nomadic bastards, maybe hired in another text blast to take out Gidion.
“Hair doesn’t look all oily and greasy.” Gidion had noticed the nomadic vampires he’d dealt with didn’t tend to look all that clean. He supposed a good shower was hard to come by for those guys. Turning into a member of the undead didn’t automatically make a vampire smell better or worse. True they didn’t sweat as much as a mortal might, but they still got dirty. After a few days without a bath, those hard to reach places stopped smelling nice.
One of the pictures hadn’t offered a good picture of his target, but he got a good look at the interior of the car. It looked too clean to be one of those vampire “mobile homes” like the Crown Vic he’d found near the Canal Walk. The other Crown Vic he’d borrowed from the guy at the safe house had leather seats which were all tore up. That guy had piled on the mileage. The seats in his shadow’s Lincoln were in much better shape.
This guy was definitely a local, and that meant he was part of the Richmond Coven.
“That might be useful.” Gidion rubbed Page’s back, and her throat rumbled with content.
After months of hunting, he’d finally found a direct line to the coven. He just needed a way to take advantage of it.