Текст книги "Legacy"

Автор книги: Jeanne Stein

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

I shake my head. “He’s on administrative leave. I don’t have a contact in the department right now. Your lawyer will have access to those things. Call Sutherland and have the reports faxed to my office. You have the number.”

I drain the last of the coffee and stand.

Gloria does, too. She extends her hand. “I’ll call right now. Thank you, Anna. For doing this. I know you don’t want to.”

I return the handshake. Oh, but I do want to. The smile on my face must look to Gloria like a gesture of goodwill. The truth is, it’s a gesture of good riddance. One way or the other, Gloria is soon to be history.

I can hardly wait for her to be gone.

CHAPTER 19

WHEN I LEAVE GLORIA, I HEAD TO MY OFFICE. I realize as soon as I’m in the car that she never answered the question of why she went to Rory’s yesterday in the first place. She pulled a neat little trick, distracting me with the coffee cup and the trembling hands. She recovered herself quickly enough, though, when the questions shifted to Mrs. O’Sullivan.

She’s hiding something. I’m tempted to turn around and go right back to the hotel, force her to tell me what O’Sullivan said that sent her scampering to his home. Truthfully, though, there’s another matter I’m more interested in. I want to find out why Frey objected so strongly to my meeting with Sandra. Frey and I have fought some pretty dangerous characters—human and otherwise. He knows I can take care of myself. The fact that he reacted so negatively means something.

Should I take his advice? Call Williams? And yet, when I saw Williams last night, did he offer any advice? Issue any warnings about meeting with Sandra? No. In fact, all he did was push the same buttons. Warn me that I was living a lie and that I’d crawl back into the fold soon enough.

I think Frey isoverreacting.

I glance at my watch. I’m not due at Mom’s until later. I may as well resume my reading on the deck of our office. Then when Gloria’s lawyer faxes me the reports, I can look them over right away and decide what to do next.

David and I share an office on Pacific Coast Highway. Close to Seaport Village. Our business, fugitive apprehension, bounty hunting, has boomed in the last year or so. It’s the perfect career choice for two adrenaline junkies. David is an ex-pro football player who couldn’t face the prospect of opening a car dealership or becoming a sportscaster when he retired. I was a schoolteacher who couldn’t face another year of teenage angst.

My parents still don’t understand how I could have made such a radical career change. They never recognized the wild child who only went into education to please her mother. From the beginning, teaching was an ill fit. When I found myself hating the classroom even more than some of my students, I knew it was time to quit. Meeting David in a kickboxing class and listening to his stories about bounty hunting was like a door opening into another world. I only had to throw his six-foot-six frame on his butt a couple of times to convince him to take me on as a partner.

That was almost four years ago.

Before I became vampire.

I unlock the door and step into the empty office. I miss David. Though our relationship isn’t what it was before a rogue vamp attacked and turned me, we still share—what? Love of the chase. Freedom. An appreciation of what making good money does for your lifestyle. Now, with Gloria soon to be but a bitter memory and that point of contention gone, maybe we can start having fun together again.

Yeah. Fun that does not involve eating or showing how strong and fast I’ve become or avoiding mirrored bars and backlit windows.

Not bloody likely.

The most I can hope for is that his next girlfriend doesn’t make it her mission to get me out of his life. God knows, Gloria tried hard enough.

I trudge over to the slider and pull it open. The deck stretches the length of our office and is suspended over the bay. The sky above is deep blue and the water below white tipped and frothy.

We’re in the corner office. The neighbor to our left, a real estate broker, has strung Christmas lights and installed a tree in the middle of his deck. His slider is open, too, and the not-so-soft strains of Christmas carols drift out. For once, it doesn’t bother me. For once, I’m not dreading Christmas. For once I think maybe I won’t fight with David about putting up our own tree.

That is assuming he comes back before Christmas.

I lean against the deck rail, relaxing for a minute. Since my body temperature is much, much cooler than the 98.6 degrees of a human, and the air feels slightly warm to my skin, I figure it must be in the sixties. A clear, perfect December day.

Frey’s book calls to me. Not literally, although it wouldn’t surprise me if it was capable of such a thing. I retrieve it from the desk, roll my chair out onto the deck and settle in.

Let’s see—chapter two. I thumb to the page.

I skim the text, letting the salient points sink in and skipping the irrelevant.

When bitten by a werewolf, a person does not undergo a drastic change. Not at first. He or she is taken to the woods and left there by his “sire” with no weapon and no food. He is told he must obtain a belt of wolf fur. He must obtain that belt within fourteen days or before the full moon, whichever occurs first. If he does not kill a wolf in that time, he dies.

If he is successful, the pelt becomes his talisman. He is accepted into the werewolf community and is initiated into a pack. The pack is his family. He is free to choose a mate, but only from within the family. If there are not enough females in the pack, he must earn the right to bring another over. The subjugation of females is complete within a pack. Mating is for life. Werewolves only propagate by an exchange of blood. Once bitten and initiated, the werewolf must, within its lifetime, turn two others to complete the circle of life. The rule is strict—he may turn only two. Rogues who disobey this edict are dealt with severely. (No details are given, but since I’ve dealt with rogue vamps before I can imagine what it means—death.)

The chapter ends and I’m left fuzzy headed and confused, partly from the strain of interpreting the difficult text and partly because what I read contradicts everything I ever knew about werewolves.

As soon as that thought passes through my head, the absurdity of it makes me laugh. The same could be said about vampires. Until I became one, I had quite a different perspective on the subject. Hadn’t almost everything I believed about vampires proven to be false? Why should the popular mythos about werewolves be any less false?

And yet, there is one glaring inconsistency. Sandra is the leader of a werewolf pack. She’s female. Definitely, unquestionably female. From what I saw the other night, her pack is 90 percent female. There were maybe two or three males in Culebra’s bar that night. Unremarkable males obviously because I can’t remember what they looked like. I wonder their purpose? Sexual toys? Heavy lifters? Bike mechanics?

Hmmm.

Chapter three beckons so I prepare to continue reading when the chime of the fax machine distracts me from the book.

Gloria’s lawyer?

I go inside to watch the machine spit out page after page of grainy, handwritten forms. The first page is a note on the lawyer’s letterhead. It requests I call with anything I learn—either to Gloria’s advantage or not. It also adds that I am to invoice the law office and not Gloria for my services.

No problem. I don’t care who writes the checks as long as they’re written and don’t bounce.

I gather up the pages and take them back out to the desk. Frey’s book gets put aside.

It doesn’t take me long to go through the stack. There’s the original police report made on the scene. Harris caught the case. It came in on a 911 call from Mrs. O’Sullivan at 9:10 p.m.

Harris’ notes are precise, detailed and objective. No weapon was found at the scene. The ME put time of death somewhere between 2:00 and 6:00 p.m. O’Sullivan was killed by a small-caliber weapon, one shot to the back of the head. No sign of forced entry. No obvious sign of a struggle. The only thing disturbed was a stack of papers on the desk.

The interview with Mrs. O’Sullivan is more interesting. She named Gloria as a suspect right off. Talked about the affair and hinted that there were improprieties in their business dealings as well. She said she didn’t know the details, but her husband indicated he had hired a forensic accountant to go over the restaurant’s books. She assumed he’d found something because the last few days Rory had been furious with Gloria and tried several times to get in touch with her.

The next interview was with the son, Jason. Fourteen years old. Home from Loyola Prep School for the holiday break. He and his stepmom had spent the afternoon shopping and then went to dinner. He said he didn’t know anyone who would want to hurt his father. He was with his stepmother when she found the body.

There was no one else in the home. The staff had the day off. The house is secluded behind a gated brick wall and is not visible from the street. To gain access, a key card is needed. As far as she knew, Mrs. O’Sullivan said, all the cards were accounted for, but she couldn’t be sure if Gloria had one. She thought she probably did . . .

I have to smile at that. Mrs. O’Sullivan was doing a masterful job of steering the investigation toward Gloria.

The rest of the pages include pictures of the crime scene, O’Sullivan slumped across his desk, close-ups and wide range shots. The room. The outside of the house showing the windows and the ground beneath. The ground was not disturbed, and the notes indicated the area was muddy because the sprinklers had run that morning. If someone had broken in through the windows, there would have been footprints.

There are booking files. There’s a mug shot, but damn if Gloria doesn’t look beautiful. In a mug shot. She stares right into the camera, eyes wide, head up. An expression of shock and bewilderment casts a shadow on those perfect features, but not a hair is out of place.

The last page is the result of the warrant search of Gloria’s suite at the Four Seasons and her vehicle. Nothing of interest found. No weapon. No key card for O’Sullivan’s home. A request is to be filed to search her L.A. residence. The restaurant.

And David’s condo.

That brings me straight up in the chair. Naturally they’d include David’s condo. Not only because David and Gloria are a well-known local celebrity couple, but because of the way David acted with Harris. Now with the revelation that Gloria and O’Sullivan were lovers, this search may be a fishing expedition for an accomplice. Or worse. David may actually be a suspect.

Why didn’t I think of that this morning?

I grab the phone and put a call into SDPD. When I ask to speak to Detective Harris, I get an officer in his unit that tells me he’s not available.

I don’t leave a message. I’m out of the office and into my car so fast, the detective on the other end of the line may not yet realize it’s gone dead.

CHAPTER 20

DAVID’S CONDO IS DOWNTOWN, A QUICK TEN minutes from our office. On the way, I call his cell. It’s still turned off but I leave a message, though I suspect he won’t pick it up when he sees who it’s from. He’s being such an ass. I’d certainly want to know if the police were searching myhome. I hope I get there before they do.

I don’t. Harris is coming down the front steps with three uniforms. I slide into a loading zone parking space and propel myself out of the car.

“Detective Harris.”

He stops when he hears his name and meets me at the bottom of the stairs. The uniforms at his side step between us, frowning, until he waves them off. He says something to them and they move away toward the waiting police cars. Then he turns his attention to me.

“Ms. Strong.”

I gesture toward the building. “What were you doing in my partner’s condo?”

He smiles. “You aren’t that naive.” He reaches into a pocket and pulls out the search warrant. “I would give this to Mr. Ryan but he doesn’t seem to be around. It’s a copy of a search warrant. Duly executed. I left another in the apartment. Care to tell me where he’s gone?”

I glance over the warrant. No surprises. It lists the same items as Gloria’s. When I look back up, two more uniforms and another suit have come downstairs. Empty-handed.

Harris takes the warrant out of my hand. “Where is he, Ms. Strong?”

I put on an innocent face and shrug. “Don’t know, Detective. He left town after you arrested his girlfriend. He was a bit upset.”

Harris laughs. “I can imagine. You find out your girlfriend is unfaithful and a murderer all in the same evening. It would ruin my night.”

The next instant the amusement is gone from his face. “That’s assuming he hadn’t learned about the affair earlier. If I find out he had, Mr. Ryan may have more to deal with than a broken heart.”

He turns away then and rejoins the cop waiting by the patrol car. I watch them pull away. At least he didn’t press me for information about David’s whereabouts. Nor did he threaten me with obstruction. I guess Gloria is still number one on his hit parade.

I let myself into David’s condo with my key. There are two ways to toss a place—the neat way if you don’t want to make it obvious what you were looking for or the trash it way if you don’t care.

Harris didn’t care. Not that he broke anything or deliberately went out of his way to mess things up, but drawers and cabinets were left open, the clothes in the closet pushed to one side, items on David’s desk rearranged. David, the neat freak, will not be happy.

I’m not going to straighten up. David should have been here to supervise instead of slinking away like a whipped puppy. Serves him right to come home to a mess.

On my way out, I do stop, though, to scoop up the newspapers accumulating on the doorstep. He hadn’t bothered to stop delivery. David takes both San Diego and L.A. papers, and when I toss them onto the living room coffee table, a picture on the front page of the Los Angles Timescatches my eye.

More than catches my eye. Trips that memory switch I’d been waiting for.

Rory O’Sullivan and his wife and son.

Jason. The kid I saw on the court steps with Gloria.

CHAPTER 21

JASON O’SULLIVAN. NOW I REALIZE WHERE I’D SEEN him before. Not in person, but in media accounts of the restaurant opening. He’d accompanied his parents that night. Video of the three of them exiting a limo and being greeted at the door by Gloria had run on every newscast.

So what was he doing this morning hugging the woman accused of killing his father?

I pick up the phone and call the hotel. When I ask to be connected to Gloria’s room, I’m told she’s left a “do not disturb” message. Crap. I leave a message for her of my own—“Call me. And do not ever have the operator refuse my calls again.”

I slam the receiver down. She’s probably in a sedative-induced coma. She made it clear on the courthouse steps that she wasn’t going to talk about Jason, which leaves only one other person to ask.

Jason.

David doesn’t have a desktop computer at home, only a laptop, and it’s nowhere in sight, so I figure he must have it with him. That means back to the office.

David and I are Mac people. We each have a monitor on opposite sides of our big, oak partner’s desk. I power mine up.

I figure odds are against a listed telephone number, but check online anyway. I’m right. No listing in his name. I could ask Gloria’s lawyer to get it for me, but then I’ll have to explain why I want it. Since Jason is a minor, I’d rather not involve Gloria’s lawyer, Jason’s mother and the army of O’Sullivan lawyers no doubt on the family payroll when I talk to him. Time enough later to share information.

If it turns out there’s anything to share.

I do know another way to track down a teenager.

I log on to MySpace. David and I got an account not long ago for this purpose—it’s a great tracking tool. I do a search for “Jason O’Sullivan.” I get ninety-four hits, including every variation of the name you can imagine. Sixteen actually are “Jason O’Sullivan’s.” It takes the better part of an hour to sort through some pretty whacked-out profiles to find one that seems promising. Says he’s eighteen, naturally, looking for friends. Lives in L.A. The kid in the picture, though it’s not a sharp image, looks like the kid I saw with Gloria today.

It’s worth a shot.

I send an instant message: FRND OF GLORIA. RESPOND FUR 2.

I have no way of knowing if this is the right Jason or if he’s online. Nothing to do now but wait.

So, it’s back to Frey’s book. I settle into my desk chair, prop my feet up on the desk and start to read.

A few paragraphs into chapter three, and I have dubbed this one “the care and feeding of werewolves.” Werewolves are human in most aspects twenty-seven days out of the month. Except for not being able to make babies (something weres and vampires have in common), they work (or “toil” in the book’s archaic turn of phrase) in jobs, can have a social life outside of the pack, attend church and perform “works of goodwill” in their communities.

It’s the other three days that create problems.

Werewolves must make a change at least once a month, usually during the full moon. The moon, however, does not causethe change. It’s the life cycle of the were that requires it. Since a transformation must take place at least once a month in order for the were to survive, the full moon is merely a way of calculating time. A lunar wake-up call.

If the were does not make the change, his body goes into “crisis” (a condition not described), from which he will not recover. He needs the belt of wolf fur to make the change. Without it, the animal cannot emerge. (What does this “belt” look like? Is it literally a belt of fur that can be taken off? Does it meld into his skin to precipitate the change? Damn. Not enough details here.) If he doesn’t “metamorphose” at least one time a month, he dies.

However, if he is transformed during the full moon, the odds are increased that the were will do humans harm. Since early recorded history, it has been observed that many animals are more prone to bite during a full moon than any other time. In his animal form, the were is particularly vulnerable to this behavior. Ordinarily, the were will only do what wolves do—hunt, feed, mate in a pack. Food sources are what would be found in the woods: small rodents, birds, such game as they can bring down. Should a pack happen upon a human, however, while an ordinary animal might be frightened away by aggressive behavior or shouting, a were pack is more likely to attack. The majority of werewolf killings occur this way.

How does one recognize werewolves? Most obvious is to see a pack in an area or location where wolves should not be, specifically, in a town or village. If the animals are observed acting in ways that suggest a higher intelligence or unusual physical abilities, or if you strike one with a nonmetallic object and do no harm, or (I love this one) if you are in an area with a large concentration of immigrants from Eastern Europe, most likely you will have made contact with werewolves.

Silver offers protection against werewolves. (Finally, something in the lore that I recognize.) A silver-topped cane or silver saber or knife will dispatch a werewolf, as will silver bullets.

The most effective method of protecting oneself?

Avoidance. Simply put, all ye, stay away from werewolves.

I close the book and lay it on the desk.

Stay away from werewolves.

Good advice under most conditions, I’m sure. My meeting with Sandra has nothing to do with her being a werewolf and everything to do with finally freeing myself of Avery. When we fought and I killed him, I did it defending my life. I didn’t do it to become heir to his fortune. I wasn’t aware of the ancient vampiric law that bestowed his property on me as survivor of an unjust battle. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want it. I’ve spent the last six months trying to forget it.

As far as I’m concerned, Sandra’s claiming title as Avery’s wife is a relief.

There isn’t a reason in the world why Sandra and I shouldn’t part tonight as friends.

An urgent stirring sends heat flooding through me.

Maybe more than friends.

I stand up, stretch, move to the deck.

I need to move. I need air to clear my head. I need to understand why once again, thoughts of Sandra spark such a powerful sexual response.

That I’m attracted to Sandra sexually is startling. I made fun of it with Culebra, blamed the feeling on a spell. I’ve almost finished Frey’s reading assignment, however, and there has been no mention of werewolves being capable of casting love spells.

I think about seeing her in the bar. How I hadn’t noticed her at first. Hadn’t noticed her at all, really, until she wanted me to. Then she hit me with a psychic sexual punch so strong, it left me dizzy.

So strong, the sound of her voice made me agree to go to Avery’s tonight, something I’d sworn never to do.

So strong, I get shivers of delight imagining how it would be to please her.

Like a junkie jonesing for a fix.

Doesn’t make sense.

Until suddenly, it does.

It’s crystal clear.

I don’t know how she’s doing it, but I do know why. This compulsion to be with her, this need to please her, is a weapon. She either doesn’t understand or doesn’t believe that I’m not going to fight her claim for Avery’s property. That I’m relieved to be free of it. So she’s set this velvet-lined trap.

A damned effective one.

Tonight, all I need do is make her understand that she has nothing to fear from me. She can revoke the spell. I’ll give her anything she wants. Willingly.

Anything.