Текст книги "Irregulars "

Автор книги: Astrid Amara

Соавторы: Nicole Kimberling,Ginn Hale,Josh lanyon
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

Chapter Eight

While Gunther spent the day visiting homes and interviewing members of the local trans-goblin community, Keith remained in his hotel room, staring at his own laptop, sifting through tens of thousands of pieces of text.

Looking.

Searching for any connection.

Keith made grilled cheese, brewed coffee.

Around ten p.m., Gunther returned. “Find out anything interesting?”

“Samantha Evans, the booker from Lulu’s Flapjack Shack, has gone missing. Her mother reported her disappearance to the PPB and they sent out an officer to investigate, but according to the PPB report, her boyfriend says it’s not uncommon for her to take off for a couple of days without telling anyone,” Keith said. “What about you?”

“I had to drink seventeen cups of tea, but I did manage to catch up on every piece of trans-goblin gossip for the last fifteen years. Lancelot, our goat-seeking goblin musician, has recently lost both his parents in a boating accident.”

“A suspicious accident?”

“Not at all.” Gunther leaned back, closed his eyes. “Nothing even remotely suspicious about him. Everybody loves him as far as I can tell.”

Gunther yawned mightily. Keith waited for him to continue. He did not. A minute later Keith said, “You can take the bed if you want, Heartman.”

Gunther complied, lurched up out of the chair, and flopped onto the bed limp as a side of salmon slapping down onto a chopping board.

Thinking that he should persevere, but tempted beyond all reasonable measure, Keith made it ten more minutes before joining Gunther on the ugly bedspread, then between the freshly changed hotel sheets.

Approximately five hours later, at 3:06, PPB called them out to take a look at a foot.

The foot in question had been found lodged under some fallen wood near an observation point in the Smith and Bybee Wetlands Natural Area. The foot was pale as wax. It had four toes—all of them very long. Each greasy white digit ended in a horn-like yellow talon. The most striking feature of the foot, though, was its NIAD vampire-identification bracelet looping the burned and slimy ankle stump.

“We called this cuff into the office and they gave us your number,” the police officer said. “I would have called the department of wildlife myself. Since it doesn’t look like a human foot.”

“It’s not a human foot.” Keith knew he stated the obvious but felt the need to say something. “Don’t worry, I’ve got the gear to take care of it.”

“Who found this?” Gunther asked.

“And ornithology professor from PSU. He was trying to set up in a blind before sunrise to observe the waterfowl when he ran across it. We sent him home. We wouldn’t have called you except for the cuff.”

“It’s no problem,” Gunther said.

“Do you mind if I ask what that thing is?”

“It’s an animal limb. We’ll know more about it after it goes to the lab in San Francisco.” Keith opened up a lightproof bag and prepared to remove the evidence from the scene. They’d need to buy some dry ice on the way back to the hotel to keep it fresh during shipping.

“It doesn’t really look like any kind of animal around here,” the officer remarked. “I’ve hunted here all my life, you know.”

Gunther stepped smoothly between them. “I strongly suspect that this is part of a highly endangered animal.”

“Endangered animal?”

“Yes, the Argentinean four-toed sloth. Have you ever heard if it?”

“No. I’ve seen a sloth in Costa Rica before, but never heard of the Argentinean one.”

“Well, until recently, they were considered extinct. I’m actually collecting money for habitat preservation right now. Do you think you’d be interested in helping with a donation? Anything at all would be appreciated.”

The officer demurred, claiming to have left his wallet in the car, and sidled away.

“What would you have done if he’d given you money?”

“That guy? It was never a possibility,” Gunther said, smiling.

Keith crouched down. The stench of decay filled his nostrils. He gloved up and gingerly picked up the limb. After wiping the goo away he read out the serial number on the tracking cuff while Gunther typed it into the database, via his phone.

“Janice Sounder,” Gunther pronounced. “No surprise there. The question is—is the rest of Janice alive somewhere?”

“I don’t think so.” Keith finished bagging the foot, then poked at the ground with his pen. Though footprints and rain marred the scene, traces of ash remained. “I think she burned here.”

“Wouldn’t there be clothes left behind? Or remnants anyway?”

“Only if she was wearing them.” Keith beckoned the PPB liaison forward. “You say the foot was found in the woodpile?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was any of the wood around it burned?”

“Yes, sir. We have those in evidence. We’re testing them for traces of accelerant. We did find some metal as well. Some fragments of silver and also a piece of metal we think might have been a wedding ring, sir.”

“Why do you think that?”

“It was gold and about the right shape.”

Driving up the road, Keith could see a small procession of nondescript black SUVs approaching. The forensic team had arrived, probably via some sort of portal. Through his NIAD glasses, he could see the faint blue tracers still clinging to them.

“Well,” he said. “I suppose we need to go turn this over to the team.”

By the time they’d relinquished Janice’s foot to the Irregulars forensic team and signed all the requisite papers, it was seven a.m. Keith was hungry and on the delirious level of fatigue. He pulled into an old-school donut shop called the Tulip Bakery, glanced over to Gunther, and said, “You want to go in or should I just get a dozen and head back to the hotel?”

Gunther leaned back in his seat, eyes closed. “I trust you.”

Tulip Bakery turned out to have the sort of donuts he remembered from his childhood back east. No coffee-milk, in fact, and no coffee at all. He got an assortment of cakes and raised and a couple of maple bars. He set the box in Gunther’s lap—the other man didn’t open his eyes but held the box instinctively as Keith pulled out of the parking lot, heading back to downtown.

“Okay, so we’ve got the butchery venue and we’ve got one dead vampire who was supposed to have gone to Boise but never made it.” Keith rubbed his face, not relishing the drive back. “There is no reason to believe that these two occurrences are connected except for proximity.”

Gunther reclined his seat. “Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that they are.”

“All right.”

“What if Janice was somehow connected to the killings—maybe not as a killer, but as a purchaser of blood?”

“Why kill her then?” Keith asked.

“Maybe she wanted out. Maybe she was blackmailing the real killer.”

“I don’t know. The Sounders have been here for a hundred and forty-five years without a single incident,” Gunther pointed out.

“Okay, let’s go at it from another angle. Who was Janice meeting in Boise?”

“A vampire named Silas DuPree. According to our office there he hasn’t even left his house for the last fifteen years.” Gunther cracked an eye long enough to paw a coconut twist out of the donut box.

“How does Silas survive?”

“Blood delivered weekly by courier.” Gunther took a bite of his donut. “He’s basically a shut-in.”

“Where does he get the money for the home delivery bloodmobile?”

“He wrote a series of romance novels featuring sexy reclusive loners. Before that he performed on stage, but that would have been in the pre-electricity era.” Gunther inhaled at least half his donut in one massive bite. “Damn, these are good. Any coffee?”

“There’s some cold stuff from yesterday in the cupholder if you don’t mind my backwash.”

Gunther looked like he might make some sort of droll remark, then seemed to think the better of it. He slugged back Keith’s leftover black with two sugars, then fished around in his pocket for his cigarettes.

They turned and were heading straight into the rising sun. Keith scowled. More than likely this was the last sight that Janice Sounder had seen. “Did our office actually send an agent to speak with DuPree or did they just check the computer tracking system?”

“I don’t know.” Apparently reinvigorated by fried dough, Gunther adjusted his seat back to alert passenger position. “Are you thinking that he’s not really there?”

“I’m thinking that a vampire can survive losing a foot, no matter how it gets removed.”

“That’s true,” Gunther said. “And speaking of surviving losing a foot, we’ve also just seen that a foot can survive losing a vampire.”

“What’s your point?”

“It’s really convenient that we should find Janice’s ankle cuff still attached to her foot. I think she might have deliberately shoved her foot out of the sunlight when she knew that she was going to die.”

“It’s not like the sunlight would have destroyed the cuff. We would have found that eventually via the GPS tracking.”

“But what would that have looked like? Just a ring of plastic. It’s nothing that anyone would call the police over,” Gunther said. “Someone needs to contact Janice’s friend in Boise directly.”

“I’d like to do it myself.”

“That’s just what I was thinking. I’ll call for air transport.” Gunther applied himself to locating his phone.

While Keith focused on staying awake so as not to kill them both in a tragic car wreck, Gunther spent the next few minutes arranging for a plane to take them from Portland to Boise. “A NIAD plane can take us at four and bring us back tonight.”

Keith nodded.

Gunther finished off his donut, then paused thoughtfully. “That was pretty good. Could have used some hot sauce though.”

“I could use a nap and shower.”

To Keith it seemed inevitable that they would end up having sex again. They were both too exhausted to feel inhibited and also pumped up on half a dozen donuts each. It felt natural in the surreal, sugary morning to invite Gunther into his room, then into his shower, then finally into his bed.

Afterward, Gunther lay next to him, his chest heaving. Keith stared up at the hotel ceiling for a few minutes, catching his breath.

Gunther said, “Want something to drink?”

“Anything that contains alcohol.”

Gunther rose, opened the refrigerator. The chill and artificial light flowed out across Keith’s damp skin and silhouetted Gunther’s perfect body as he grabbed a beer and twisted the cap off. He handed it to Keith, then delved back into the refrigerator. From inside the door, he chose a bottle of Dave’s Insanity Sauce, unscrewed the top, then tipped his head back and chugged the entire thing, ending with a satisfied sigh.

He climbed back into the bed and pressed his lips against Keith’s cheek.

Keith lay awake as Gunther fell into a doze, feeling the slight warmth of pure capsaicin left behind in the shape of a kiss and wondering what the hell he was going to do now.

Chapter Nine

For the first time in two years, Keith dreamed about his old restaurant. He had thought that he would dream about it more than he did. It was as though even his subconscious mind remained too wounded to venture back into his own kitchen.

He knew he was in a dream. The department had trained him in lucid dreaming, trances, and astral projections as part of his basic course. But knowing one is in a dream and being able to control that dream world remained two different activities.

He stood behind the long, old-fashioned counter, regarding his sole customer, who sat drinking coffee and reading the paper. A snow goblin. A creature of made of angular bone with smoldering red slits for eyes. The goblin turned a page of paper, took a sip of coffee, and then shook a few dashes of hot pepper sauce into the liquid. He said, “I think we should check out that film festival.”

“Can’t. I’m working.”

The goblin folded the paper shut and said, “Not everything is about food, you know.”

“To me it is. This is my whole life. It’s everything I know.” He became aware of the fact that he hadn’t finished his prep work for the dinner rush. Customers would be coming in hungry and wanting to be fed. Shadows moved outside his restaurant’s front window, some stopping to read the menu posted there. Somewhere in the background he could hear the sound of the dishwasher playing reggae and clanking dishes together. He had to get to work. Keith went to pick up his chef’s knife from the cutting board, but he couldn’t find it. Instead his mage pistol sat atop a neatly folded bar towel. How could he have left it sitting out? He lifted it and slid it into the holster under his left shoulder. The goblin, Gunther, glanced up.

“You look good wearing that,” he remarked, tapping a cigarette out of a pack. “It suits you.”

He felt a slight bump, then a hand on his knee. The restaurant dissolved. He opened his eyes to see the inside of a plane cabin. The private plane used by agents on assignment. Gunther sat across from him, leaning forward, shaking his knee slightly.

“We’re touching down,” he said.

Outside Keith could see the flat expanse of the Boise airport. The evening sky had gone the color of cantaloupe and cured ham, tinged at the edges with lavender. A Provençal-flavored sky, Keith thought.

“I was dreaming,” he said blearily.

“Was it prophetic?”

“No, just a normal dream.” Keith shifted in his seat to pull on his coat. “You were in it though.”

“Was I?” Gunther sat back, apparently pleased by this information.

“You were made of bone.”

“How did I look?”

Keith thought of telling him. Frightening. Strange. The shape of his nightmares. Instead he said, “Good…You looked good.”

***

As was standard, a government car was waiting for them—a big one. Keith had never been to Idaho before. As far as he could tell everything had been made to accommodate at least a family of six. Especially the cars. Or rather, the SUVs. They crowded the roads and lined up in neat rows in the ample parking lots.

DuPree’s house was located in a section of the old town called The Bench, which was what the natives called the one bluff that bisected the city. Houses there were, like everything else, large. Even DuPree’s old arts and crafts style home, which must have been a mansion when it had been built in the early forties.

The house looked exactly like a place where a vampire would live. Surrounded by a wrought-iron fence posted with pressed tin Keep Out and Beware of Dog signs.

“Do you think he really has a dog?” Gunther asked.

“If the dog is as old as the sign, it must be a revenant by now.” Keith pressed the button mounted on the front gate. He expected a voice to come at him from some hidden intercom speaker. Instead the front door opened fractionally. A man’s pale face peeked out. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties with thick, gray-streaked hair and a thin, beaky face.

“Who’s there?” The voice was thin and reedy.

“NIAD.” Keith held up his identification. He didn’t know if DuPree could read it in the dark. Probably. “We have some questions to ask you.”

DuPree crept from the door, looking furtively to the now-dark sky, then toward the neighbors on either side, before he slunk down the sidewalk toward them. He was dressed in a black turtleneck and slacks, which made his spindly limbs seem even more spidery.

He gave Keith a long, suspicious look, then turned to Gunther. DuPree sniffed the air obtrusively, his mouth half open. When he did, his expression brightened considerably. He whispered, “You’re trans-goblin, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir. Gunther Heartman.” He, too, showed his ID.

“Oh, good.” DuPree seemed inordinately relieved by this. He unlocked the gate and Keith started through. DuPree leaped back.

“Please don’t come too close, Agent Curry. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but I have a phobia of humans.” His voice shook slightly.

This was new. Keith didn’t think he’d ever heard of anything so ridiculous in his life. A hunter being afraid of his prey.

“May we come inside,” Keith said.

“I certainly can’t stop you, can I?” DuPree remarked. He said this without particular malice, just making a statement of fact.

After waiting for DuPree to lock the gate behind them, they followed him into his disheveled old living room. Books and papers were everywhere: stacked on tables and chairs, forming leaning, waist-high towers against the wall. Most of the furniture seemed to have been acquired in the forties as well. There were a couple of deco beige couches and silver modernist lamps.

“Please sit down.” DuPree indicated the only clear couch in the room. He kept well away from Keith. “Can I get you a soda? I have several flavors.”

“No, thank you. Would you mind showing your cuff, please?” The vampire’s nervousness was making Keith edgy. Gunther didn’t seem phased by it. “We need to verify that it’s working.”

“Could Agent Heartman do the cuff verification please? I mean no offense, Agent Curry, but if you come too close I might hyperventilate.” DuPree said this apologetically.

Gunther smiled easily. “Sure.”

He approached DuPree with no obvious caution or concern and this seemed to settle the vampire somewhat. Once Gunther had established that DuPree’s cuff was both present and sending out the correct signal, he took his seat beside Keith on the couch.

DuPree remained standing, hand on the mantelpiece of his empty fireplace. “What can I do for you?”

“We’re here about Janice Sounder. Her husband said she was supposed to be here visiting you.” Gunther took the lead.

“Yes, but she never arrived. I phoned several times, but she isn’t answering her cell,” DuPree said. “I even called her awful master, but he says he hasn’t seen her. I’m terribly worried about her.”

“Why is that?” Keith asked. He didn’t miss DuPree’s use of the word master—nor did he miss the fact that DuPree didn’t seem fond of Sounder. DuPree also appeared to be under the impression that Janice was still alive, but he could just be casting a good glamour. A person couldn’t trust body language when an extra-human’s real body wasn’t visible.

“Because she hasn’t arrived.” DuPree seemed to feel he was stating the obvious. “She was flying on a night flight, but you can never be sure about airplanes these days. Flights get delayed. I’ve been checking the news to see if there were any cases of spontaneous combustion.”

“What is your relationship to Janice?” Gunther asked.

“She wrote me a fan letter about ten years ago,” DuPree said. “We started a correspondence. At first neither of us knew the other was a vampire, but after a couple of years we discovered we were kindred spirits, so to speak.”

“And Mr. Sounder knew you two were writing letters?” Keith pulled out his notebook.

“Yes, of course. Janice had a very traditional concubine relationship. She keeps nothing from her master.” DuPree seemed displeased as he said this.

“Do you think her master had a problem with her writing to another vampire?” Gunther asked.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t think she would have written to me if he had.” DuPree paused, alarm rising up through his expression. “What do you mean by ‘had a problem’? Why are you speaking in the past tense? Has something happened to her?” DuPree started forward toward Gunther, then recoiled slightly as he remembered that Keith was also present.

“I’m sorry to inform you that Janice Sounder has been killed,” Gunther said.

“Was it Sounder?” DuPree asked.

“We’re looking at a variety of suspects. Why would you think it was Sounder?” Keith kept his voice very neutral. He had perceived that, though he was more comfortable playing the heavy with Gunther taking the more sympathetic angle, DuPree truly was experiencing a tremendous degree of distress. He didn’t want to shut the vampire down with ham-fisted tough guy talk, no matter how easily it came to him.

“Because Janice and I had planned to leave this realm together. Surely you must know. I’ve filed all the paperwork. Oh, Janice…” DuPree crumpled down to the sofa facing them. A thin red tear trickled down his gaunt cheek. “She didn’t even have a chance to file her papers, did she?”

“No record of a petition exists as far as we know.” Gunther rose and handed DuPree a handkerchief. “When you said you and she were kindred spirits, what did you mean, exactly?”

“We were born into the same cult. Polygamists, you know. That’s why we were all exiled here. I had thought that that was common knowledge.”

“Not as common as you might think,” Gunther said.

“So you have concubines as well?” Keith was a little at sea. How could this information not have been covered in basic training? Then again, there was so much information—so many realms. Realms upon realms upon realms, all stacked atop one another, existing at once in layers.

DuPree sniffed and wiped his eyes, leaving Gunther’s handkerchief streaked with blood. “No, I came as a concubine to my mistress.”

“And where is she?”

“Gone. Burned along with my two brother concubines. It’s why I’m so afraid of humans, you see?” DuPree spoke to Gunther. “I’ve seen such horrible things. And the mass media just reinforces all stereotypes about us. Encourages our murder.”

“Mass media doesn’t cover actual vampire deaths,” Keith remarked before he realized how callous his statement sounded.

“Have you seen a vampire movie?” DuPree demanded. “They’re horribly violent. Full of wooden stakes and decapitations.” DuPree choked on his last words. A sob escaped him.

Keith felt his sympathy for DuPree unexpectedly rising. Was it actually possible that Janice Sounder’s death had been merely a case of spousal abuse? Much more gently he asked, “Do you think that Sounder would kill Janice for leaving him?”

“Why not? She was his property, wasn’t she? In his mind anyway. In her mind too, at first. But after living among humans for so long, Janice had started to have her own ambitions. She had decided to write her own mystery novel. I thought she had tremendous potential. When we returned to our own world we were going to write together.”

Keith was momentarily too stunned by the idea that the vampire realm had a publishing industry to think of a follow-up question. Gunther saved him.

“Do you think we could read part of Janice’s novel?”

DuPree shook his head. “She had only just started writing it. She’d written only short stories before—mostly about farm life and rearing goats. But those killings in Portland had given her inspiration. She was asking me a lot of questions about how the police investigate crimes. I didn’t know the answers, of course, because I write only romance. I believe in love, you know.”

Keith exchanged a glance with Gunther.

“Were you in love with Janice?” Gunther asked.

“Yes, oh yes.” He broke off again, sobbing.

“What do you think happened to her?” Keith asked.

“I think that Sounder found out that she planned to leave and…” DuPree said, lifting his face from Gunther’s now-scarlet handkerchief, “and he burned her. That’s what happened to her, isn’t it? That’s how masters punish disloyal concubines. And it’s never investigated.”

“We’re investigating it now,” Gunther said.

“But you’ll never prove it,” DuPree said. “How could you? There won’t be any evidence. Like those poor girls who get drowned in Saudi Arabia or honor killings of rape victims in Pakistan. No one cares what happens to concubines. One less vampire—that’s all anyone ever thinks.”

Gunther stood. “I assure you, Mr. DuPree, that we will see this investigation to its conclusion. In the meantime, I’m afraid we will need you to remain here in Idaho.”

“Do you really think I am a suspect? I haven’t left this house in two decades.”

“No,” Keith said quickly, causing DuPree to start. “But if Sounder is behind it, we will need your testimony.”

“Please…I just want to leave this place. Meeting Janice, I finally had the courage to try and start again. Even if…” DuPree took a deep shuddering breath, but then recovered. “Even if Janice won’t be with me physically, she’ll be with me as the beautiful, shining spirit that she was.”

Keith said, “We’ll be in touch.”

Once back they were back en route to the airport, Keith said, “That was not what I expected to happen.”

Gunther shrugged. “As it turns out, not everything is about food.”

Pushing through a profound sense of déjà vu, Keith returned, “It is to me. Plainly, Janice’s interest in the Cannibal Killings could not have been coincidental. Coincidences don’t leave combusted vampires behind.”

“Agreed. We need to pay Sounder another visit. Even if he’s not connected to the Cannibal Killings, he’s certainly the number one suspect in Janice’s death.”

“Then we’re officially calling Janice’s death a murder?” Keith didn’t even know how to begin to file the paperwork on that one. Who would investigate? NIAD, he supposed.

“Vampiric concubines are citizens like anyone else, right?” Gunther’s phone rang. He answered and after a perfunctory conversation turned to Keith and said, “They found bones from the club booker’s body. Same MO as before.”

“And?” Even without the déjà vu Keith knew there had to be an and.

“They found them in our friendly rocker kook Lancelot’s garbage. He’s being held at the NIAD detention center.”