Blood Walk Part 40

Fowler crossed his legs and smoothed the fabric of his trousers over the upper knee. "I'll settle for your cooperation then. You know, going over the case file with me, telling me what you felt and thought at various points."

Garreth ran a hand through his hair. Maybe working with the writer would be one way to control what he learned. "All right." Fowler chuckled. "You don't have to sound like I'm an executioner. It isn't painful, becoming immortal. Really it isn't. I promise."

4

The party ended about three-thirty, after the second, somewhat apologetic, visit by a black-and-white. "Hey, Harry, we don't want to lean on you, but your neighbors are going to b.i.t.c.h about favoritism if we don't look like we're treating you the same as any other loud party. So turn it down, okay?"

Lien smiled at the officers and went into the family room to whisper something in Evelyn Kolb's ear. A few minutes later Kolb and her husband left with loud good-byes, and soon everyone else began drifting out, too. Garreth sighed inwardly in relief.

When the last guest had gone, Lien bolted and chained the front door and leaned against it, shaking her head. "Honorable husband, I think we're getting too old for this. Leave everything. Letty can deal with it when she comes in tomorrow morning. I hope you enjoyed yourself, Garreth."

"It was great fun seeing everyone again." He kissed her cheek. "Thank you both very much."

Upstairs, though, he scrambled into a sweat suit and running shoes and paced impatiently, waiting for Harry and Lien to settle down for the night. It seemed to take an eternity. Once he heard their bedroom door close, he bolted his on the inside and moved through it to glide silently downstairs to the refrigerator for the meal he had not been able to drink during the party. Then he slipped out through the locked front door.

Tonight he did not even consider driving. A man about to commit burglary needed an alibi. His bedroom door and the front door both locked from the inside and his car parked in the drive all night should make it appear that he could not have left.

He regretted having to leave the car, but not much. As his legs stretched and the street streamed backward beneath him, he gave himself over to the exhilaration of running. Forget where he was going and why. Forget burning bridges, the hustler, and violet eyes watching him from cold shadows. For the moment, nothing mattered but the sea-scented air filling his lungs and the power surging through his legs, giving him the heady feeling that he could run forever. He ran soundlessly through the empty residential streets, a shadow, a phantom.

Leaving the Sunset district, he crossed Golden Gate Park, then angled on north and east through Richmond into Pacific Heights. The houses lay dark and the streets deserted except for an occasional civilian car or patrolling black-and-white, which Garreth avoided by moving off the street into shadows by houses or parked cars while the unit pa.s.sed.

No activity showed in Holle's house, either. Garreth watched it from the shadow of a doorway across the street for five minutes just to be sure. With a look both ways up the street, he strolled across and listened at the front door. Nothing moved inside.

Wrench.

The hall stretched out before him, twilight bright in his night vision, empty but not silent. The house creaked and groaned with the voices of old stone and aged wood. Beneath the lingering traces of cooking odors, Emeraude perfume, and Holle's cologne, it breathed out the scents of its existence, too: varnish, wood, smoke from the fireplace, lemon oil. Garreth glanced around, from the paneling and paintings to the stairs and soaring ceiling. Where did he start looking? Right here?

Still moving silent as a shadow, he walked through the living, dining, and breakfast rooms, and into the kitchen. None of those rooms had heavy drapes. In the kitchen, though, he eyed the refrigerator. The chances of finding anything significant in it were probably slim at best. With a whole city out there to draw on, vampire guests had no need to store up blood for an extra day or two. Obtaining extra from people was not quite like bleeding a cow, either. People noticed the loss of three or four pints at one time. Still . . .

He opened the refrigerator.

Holle kept it well stocked for humans. He even kept a selection of chilled wine.

Garreth started to close the refrigerator, then stopped. He pulled the door open again to peer at the wine. Something looked odd about those bottles. After studying them for a minute, he realized why. Four of the eight had no seals. They had obviously been opened and recorked. But the recorked ones all stood in the rear.

Garreth reached back for one. Pulling it out, he blinked. A strip of red tape crossed the commercial label, lettered in black: RAW SEA WATER. DO NOT DRINK! Further examination found that the other three without seals had the same warning.

Odd. Garreth hefted the bottle. He could see someone keeping brine for marinating or cooking seafood, but why would anyone have four bottles of real sea water? There was no telling what pollutants it carried. No one could pay him to drink it! He shook the bottle.

The dark liquid inside moved sluggishly.

Garreth's neck and spine tingled. That was no sea water. He worked the cork free and sniffed at the opening.

The scent from it raised goose b.u.mps all over his body. Human blood!

He stared down at the bottle, hunger searing him. Human blood, ready to drink without having to attack anyone. Hurriedly he returned it to the refrigerator and retreated from the kitchen. No. He could not afford to indulge his appet.i.te.

On the second floor none of the rooms but the library had heavy drapes. At the rear of the house the scents of blood and Holle's cologne wafted around the edges of a locked door along with the sound of a sleeper's breathing. The room must be Holle's.

The third floor, all bedrooms, had two occupied rooms at the front, neither locked. The sleepers in both smelled of blood. The next room stood empty. The two rear rooms by the service stairs, though, had been turned into an apartment for the housekeeper. The scent of Emeraude filled them, and the housekeeper herself slept soundly in the bedroom.

He climbed the service stairs to the top floor in the attic. The old servants' quarters there had apparently been turned into more guest rooms. The front ones were unoccupied. Two locked doors closed off storage rooms. Sliding through the doors, he found light from the street s.h.i.+ning in the dormer windows to light stacked cardboard boxes and a jumble of old chairs, lamps, and some racks of clothing hanging in zippered plastic bags.

Two rooms at the back remained unchecked. He opened one door. Heavy drapes covered the dormer window. Quickly Garreth examined the bed. Earth filled the plastic mattress cover. The delicious relaxation he felt running his hand over it told him that even before the gritty s.h.i.+fting inside did.

Pay dirt. The room could be meant only to accommodate a vampire.

Only one room remained.

As he opened its door, Garreth froze with his hand on the k.n.o.b. A spicy muskiness lingered in the air, a perfume he remembered only too well. It had curled around him with such inviting sweetness that Thanksgiving night on the island in Baumen's Pioneer Park.

He fought to breathe. No! Impossible. Lane could not have been here! Could she?

But what did he know . . . really? Books with vampire lore could hardly be called authoritative. Beyond that, he had only personal experience and what Lane had told him. How could he trust what she said?

After a few minutes, panic ebbed, and as reason replaced it, it occurred to him that along with everything else Lane had learned from her mentor, Irina, she might also have adopted the other woman's perfume. What he smelled could be traces of Irina, not Lane.

His paralysis dissolved. Swiftly he examined the room. It had the same heavy drapes and earth-filled mattress cover the room next to it did. Both closet and dresser drawers had been cleaned out, but the spicy scent lingering in them, too, told him that they had been used recently. Perhaps as recently as today.

He closed the door and glided downstairs to the next floor, through the door of Holle's room. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Garreth shook the sleeping man's shoulder. "Wake up, Mr. Holle; we have things to talk about."

Holle woke with a start. "What-" He blinked, squinting up at what his darkblind eyes must see as only a vague shadow beside him. "Who are you? How the h.e.l.l did you get in-"

"I'm Garreth Mikaelian. So you know how I got in."

Holle sat up. "Then take yourself out the same way."

"Not until I know where to find Irina Rodek." Garreth switched on the bedside light. "Mr. Holle, look at me and tell me you don't know where she is."

Holle squeezed his eyes tightly shut. "I don't know."

"Look at me!"

"Sorry." Holle smiled faintly. "You're obviously young in the life. You don't have the power yet to command by voice alone."

"Someone around here has the power, though," Garreth said grimly. "Great power. Last night that someone killed a man named Richard Maruska. Maruska happened to be one of my kind."

Holle's eyelids flickered but remained closed. "Killedhim?"

"Broke his neck. At night. How many humans could do that?" Garreth watched Holle lick his lips as the statement sank in, then added, "He was supposed to meet me to tell me how to find Irina."

Sweat beaded Holle's forehead. "Irina couldn't have killed him. She-" He broke off.

"She what?" Garreth prompted. "Tell me about her. And tell me about yourself. How long have you known vampires really exist? Do many humans know?"

But Holle only pressed his lips into a line and turned his head away.

"You're obstructing a murder investigation, Holle."

The man snorted. "Conducted in the middle of the night by an officer without authority who breaks into my house and bedroom? I wonder what Sergeant Takananda would think if he knew about it."

Cold chased down Garreth's spine. He came back, "Who's going to tell him? You? The man with bottles of a very unique and bizarre vintage in his refrigerator and earth mattresses on two of his guest beds? You can't risk close scrutiny any more than I can."

Holle licked his lips again. "Then we have reached an impa.s.se."

"Not really. You say Irina can't be guilty. Fine. Let me talk to her and see for myself."

The stubborn set returned to Holle's jaw. "I told you before, I don't know where she is. She left and didn't say where she was going."The experience from years of talking to reluctant subjects told Garreth that without more leverage, this was all he would pry out of Holle. He stood, sighing. "Okay. If youhappen to remember something and care to confide it, in the interests of justice and public safety, you can reach me through Sergeant Takananda. Though it doesn't really matter. With or without your help, I'll find Irina."

The way to start, he decided on his way downstairs, was with a look at the murder scene. Maybe that would give him a lead.

Even if he had free access to the case reports-doubtful under the circ.u.mstances-they might not help. For all the crime lab's competence, their examination could have overlooked something that had significance only to a vampire.

Holle's phone directory on the hall table listed a Richard Maruska with a Western Addition address. Not the best of addresses, Garreth noted, but there were worse, and it was close. He would have time to reach it and still be back at Harry's before dawn.

Footsteps whispered overhead.

Garreth froze. They came from the guest room. One of the guests heading for the bathroom to take a leak? No, he realized a moment later. The footsteps, so quiet that human hearing would not have detected them, were coming downstairs. The guest must have heard him!

Making sure he moved soundlessly this time, Garreth raced for the front door and slipped out through it with a sharp wrench.

On the street he breathed more easily, but he lost no time breaking into a lope and heading south toward the Western Addition.

5

Between siding overdue for repainting and hallway stairs deeply worn in the center, the house had seen better days. The vertical row of mailboxes just inside the street door gave 301 as Richard Maruska's apartment. But it was the other name on the mailbox that startled Garreth: Count Dracula. A chill slid down his spine. How could the hustler be so- Then it hit him-oh, the roommate- and he remembered stories that officers on Vice told about a h.o.m.os.e.xual hustler who styled himself a vampire, coming out only at night, always dressing in formal evening clothes and an opera cape, affecting a Bela Lugosi accent. Climbing the worn stairs to the third floor, Garreth reflected that Ricky must have found the arrangement very amusing, a real vampire living with a counterfeit one.

Did "Dracula" know or suspect the truth?

The door of 301 had a police seal across it. Fingering the broad strip of yellow tape with inner fire licking at him, Garreth swore softly. The whole place was sealed. That meant the roommate had to be staying somewhere else for the time being and could not invite him in.

He turned away. On the other hand, just talking to the roommate might turn up something, and maybe he could work out something for getting into the apartment. In the meantime, he decided, glancing at his watch, he had better head home.

6

Dragging himself out of bed into the press of daylight after little more than an hour of sleep was pure agony, but Garreth forced himself up. He had to ask Harry about the hustler's roommate before Girimonte was around to question his curiosity.

Harry looked to be in no condition for casual chitchat, though, when Garreth stumbled into the kitchen. He glanced up, winced in obvious pain, and buried his nose in his coffee cup again with a groan.

Lien set a plate of eggs and hash browns on the table. The smells from it curled up around Garreth. Harry groaned even louder.

Shaking her head, Lien slid the plate to her place. "I think honorable husband has quite a head on him this morning." She somehow managed to look as if she had had a full night's sleep. She smiled at Garreth. "What about you? Can you face food?"

"G.o.d, no. I'll just make myself some tea." He filled a cup from the kettle on the stove and dropped in a tea bag out of the canister on the cabinet next to it.

"Be sure to eat at noon."

"Yes, ma'am." The water turned straw colored. Garreth discarded the tea bag.

Lien pushed hash browns around the plate with her fork. "I threw a hexagram for you this morning. It was number sixty-four, Before Completion."

His gut tightened. Her tone indicated a less than favorable hexagram. Leaning against the cabinet, he sipped the tea. "Which is?"

"The text says there is success, but if the little fox gets his tail wet before completing a crossing of the river, nothing furthers.

Which means that deliberation and caution are necessary for success."

He gave her a thin smile. "A good reminder for a cop. What didI Ching say about Harry?"

Her eyes danced. "Number twenty-three, Splitting Apart."

Despite the drag of daylight and the knots in his gut, Garreth had to bite his lip to keep from laughing aloud.

Then Lien went sober. "It does not further one to go anywhere. I wish you'd call in sick, Harry."Harry sighed. "Half the squad will be feeling as bad or worse than I am this morning."

"Then at least be very careful."

He reached out for her hand and kissed it. "I always am."

Maybe now was the time to slip in a question. Garreth said casually, "Earl Faye is one who'll definitely be worse off than you are." He sipped his tea. "He was reaching a point last night when I didn't know whether to believe him or not. He tried to tell me that Maruska's roommate is Count Dracula."

Lien giggled. "Oh really?"

"Really," Harry said. "That's what the guy calls himself. When Faye and Centrello came back from the murder scene, they said there was even a coffin in his bedroom that he sleeps in."

Maybe living with this dude was a clever move on Ricky's part, Garreth mused. Next to the hamming of the counterfeit vampire, the hustler would have seemed normal. "I wonder if we ought to talk to him again, now that it looks like Lane is connected to the killing. It might give what he has to say a different slant."

Harry started to frown in thought, then abandoned the gesture with another wince of pain. "Maybe."

"Is he still at the apartment?"