Blood Walk Part 12

"A nurse I met while the doctor was checking me over."

Harry slapped his shoulder. "That's great. You get along well with nurses. Glad to see you back in the game."

"Does this mean you'll be playing c.o.c.k of the Walk with the rest of the boys now?" Evelyn Kolb eyed him over the cup of tea she was pumping from her thermos.

Garreth paused in the act of putting his gla.s.ses back on. "What a sharp tongue you have."

She smiled. He eyed her thermos. That might be how to reduce the number of times he had to hunt. After all, the ability to store food was supposed to be an advantage of civilization.

He walked over to her desk and picked up the thermos. "Does this work very well?"

"Very well. Tea I put in in the morning is still hot enough to burn my tongue twelve hours later."

He toyed with the pump spigot on the top. "How much does it hold?"

"A quart. Why?"

"I'm thinking of bringing tea to work the way you do. They come in larger sizes, too, don't they?"

"Sure, but how much do you expect to drink in a day?"

He shrugged, noting with dismay how easily he lied these days and to how many people. Why? Right now he could have replied truthfully that he was thinking of buying a thermos.The wicked flee where no man pursueth, he thought ruefully.

Garreth returned the thermos to her desk and watched her put it away in the kneehole. A thermos full of blood would keep him several days. The flaw in that struck him on the way back to his desk. Outside its owner's body, blood clotted. The thought of ordinary blood still sounded unappealing to his brain, but that of clotted blood turned even his stomach. If he wanted to store blood, he would have to use anticoagulants. Where to come by those, though?

Harry sat at his desk frowning at the lab photo of the postmark. "What do you think these letters are?"

Garreth peered over his shoulder. "The one in the middle has to be either an O or U. Isn't that a slanted foot to the left? That would be an A, K, R, or X."

"And on the right?"

It looked like the bottom end of a straight line. "Man, that could be anything." He checked the keys of the typewriter. "F, H, I, K, N, M, or P." A thought occurred which might solve several problems. "Why don't we ask the lab if they can work on making the letters a little more visible?"

Harry shrugged. "We can ask."

Garreth maneuvered Harry into doing the talking when they reached the Crime Lab. He put in a word or two, then slid away and wandered along the worktables to where a technician was checking bloodstains on a shirt.

The tech looked up with a smile. "Glad to see you back. I'm glad I won't be giving evidence on your bloodstained clothes at a murder trial. I see you got in a few licks yourself."

"Two kinds of blood on the clothes?"

The tech nodded. "Mostly A positive, but some B positive, too."

Casually, Garreth asked, "If you wanted to keep blood fresh, how could you do it?"

The tech shook his head. "I'd rather have it dried. It's easier to a.n.a.lyze. Blood cells decay so fast in liquid or clotted blood."

"What if you wanted to keep it from clotting? Would you use heparin?"

The tech rocked his row of slides back and forth, studying the blood on them. "Heparin? Probably not. That's about the most expensive product on the market. It's cheaper to use things like oxalates and citrates." He looked up. "I'd probably choose sodium citrate. That's inexpensive and available at almost any chemical supply house. It isn't a drug, so it isn't controlled like heparin."

"How much would you have to use?" Garreth crossed his fingers, hoping the tech would not ask why he was so interested in anticoagulants.

The blood on some of the slides looked clumped. The tech wrote letters on a report form, then stood and reached for a book on a shelf above the cabinet behind him. "Well, let's see. Anticoagulants . . . Here we are. You need ten milligrams for a hundred milliliters of blood. I've bought it in a two and a half percent solution. That gives you twentyfive milligrams per cc. So a cc will keep two hundred and fifty milliliters. That help?"

"Yes. Thanks." Garreth hoped so.

9

Jubilation carried him into work on Friday. The citrate worked. Four quarts of blood sat cold and liquid in his refrigerator. A lot of drained rat bodies fed the fishes today but the slaughter was worth it. He would not have to hunt for several days. Rat blood still did not satisfy him; hunger continued to gnaw no matter how much he drank, but at least it took the edge off. He could live with what remained, like the time Marti took him off bread and he survived very well even though he never stopped craving the bread.

His thermos of tea would help keep his appet.i.te under control during the day. He was also learning to live with the pressure of daylight. The dream had been right; he could go on living a normal life and no one would ever have to suspect the changes in him.

Not even a useless interview with Lane's agent-currentagent, Garreth qualified silently; she almost certainly changed them along with her ident.i.ty-failed to dampen his spirits.

"She phoned and told me not to book her any gigs for an indefinite period of time," the woman said. "She said her mother is critically ill and she intends to stay with her until the crisis is over."

"Where's that?" Harry asked.

"I don't know. She never said."

Harry frowned. "You mean you don't have any background information on your clients?"

The agent frowned back. "Lane has a dozen backgrounds, all probably false. Look, Sergeant, I find her gigs and she pays me ten percent. That was our agreement. She gives me no trouble with performing drunk or strung out, or not showing up at all, and she brings me a small but steady income, so I don't pry into her life." The agent paused. "Once or twice I asked her personal questions and she changed the subject. She looks like a hot, foxy kid, but she's ice and steel underneath."

A very perceptive lady, Garreth reflected.

As they left, Harry asked, "Where do you want to eat lunch?"

The optimism in Garreth faltered only a little. "I'm on a diet, remember? We can eat anywhere you want, as long as I can buy a cup of tea there."

Harry grinned. "You're serious about the diet this time?"

"Of course." As though he had a choice.

"North Beach being our Italian Quarter, how about Italian food?"

"Fine." Garreth would hate it, whatever the restaurant. He hated all meals. Tea filled his stomach, but did nothing to neutralize the longings that food smells stirred in him. He envied Harry, happily putting away everything Garreth had loved but could no longer eat.

But the moment they walked in the door of the restaurant, Garreth lost all future appet.i.te for Italian food. At the first breath of inside air, his lungs froze. Instant panic set in as he tried to breathe and could not. He clawed frantically at his tie and shirt collar, yanking them open.

"Garreth! What's wrong?" Harry shook him by the shoulders.

Garreth opened his mouth wide, straining, desperately struggling to suck in air, but he might as well have been trying to inhale solid concrete.

"Garreth!"

He would suffocate in here! Half dragging Harry, half carried by him, Garreth bolted for the street.

Outside, the air turned from concrete to cold mola.s.ses. Garreth staggered up the street until the last foul taint of garlic disappeared. Only then did the air return to normal consistency. He leaned against a building, head thrown back, gulping air greedily.

"Garreth, what happened?" Harry demanded.

Garreth had no idea what to say. Would any mention of garlic start fatal thought trains? "I'm all right." As long as he avoided garlic. Put one more piece of the legend in the truth column. "It was nothing."

"Nothing! That wasn't nothing, partner. We'd better-"

From the direction of their car, a radio sputtered. "Inspectors 55."

Harry hurried back to the car to roger the call. Garreth followed with unsteady knees.

"Public service 555-6116," Dispatch said.

Harry's brows rose. "Sound familiar?"

Garreth shook his head.They drove to the nearest phone booth and Harry dialed the number. Garreth could not hear Harry's end of the conversation, only see his lips moving through the gla.s.s wall of the booth, but as he talked, Harry became more animated. He came back to the car at a run and jumped behind the wheel.

"Hey, Mik-san, are we still interested in Wink O'Hare?"

Garreth sat up straight. "Are you kidding? Did someone find him?"

"A lady who says she's Rosella Hambright's sister knows where he is. Seems he got peeved at his girl and worked her over.

The sister doesn't approve and wants Wink's hide for it."

"Let's go get him," Garreth said.

They collected two black-and-whites for backup on the way. Garreth surrept.i.tiously checked the house, a decaying two-story building with poverty ground like dirt into its facade, before they moved in. Wink was supposed to be in the second-floor apartment. Narrow, bare stairs led up from a front hall that reeked of garbage and broken plumbing. Two windows overlooked the street. Built against its neighbor, it had no side windows. In back, rotting stairs in two flights rose to a narrow back porch with one window into the apartment and a back door whose upper half contained nine small panes of gla.s.s.

The wages of sin is the h.e.l.l of hiding in stinking holes, Garreth thought while walking back up the hill and around the corner to where Harry and the blackand-whites waited.

Harry deployed everyone, a uniform to be behind a black-and-white out front, covering the front windows, another around the corner of a building covering the rear window. A third uniform would go in the front with Harry, and the fourth, up the back with Garreth.

"You're sure you're all right?" Harry asked.

Garreth removed his gla.s.ses and looked him straight in the eyes. "I'm fine. Let's go."

"We'll give him a chance to come out. If he doesn't, you break in the back door. I'll go through the front at the same time. Back door and hall door are at right angles to each other, so we shouldn't be in each other's cross fire, but for G.o.d's sake be careful about that."

Garreth and his uniformed partner, a barrel-chested veteran named Rhoades, made their way around to the back of the building and eased up the stairs, checking each tread to avoid telltale creaks. Keeping low, they crossed the porch, then flattened themselves against the building on each side of the door.

With his ear pressed against the side of the house, Garreth heard Harry knock at the front door and call, "Wink O'Hare, this is the police." Nothing stirred in the apartment.

"Come out, Wink."

A board creaked inside. Listening carefully, Garreth made out the sound of stealthy footsteps. Garreth shifted his hand up on his gun so that he could use the handgrip to break the window. His eyes met Rhoades'. The uniformed officer nodded his readiness.

Garreth, breaking the window, would go in high. Rhoades would dive in low.

"O'Hare, open up!"

The footsteps inside moved closer. "Garreth! Get him!"

At Harry's yell, Garreth smashed the handgrip of the gun into the pane directly above the k.n.o.b. The gla.s.s shattered, but with it a wave of pain like fire burned up his arm and out through his body at the same time a shot sounded explosively inside the kitchen and gla.s.s higher up shattered under the impact of a bullet.

Rhoades swore. Garreth tossed his gun into his left hand and pointed it around the edge of the doorjamb to shoot back at Wink, tilting his head just enough to expose one eye for aiming. But his finger could not move the trigger. The gun mechanism seemed frozen.

"Shoot!" Rhoades yelled.

Garreth could not. Fire seared him.

What the h.e.l.l was wrong with his gun? He remembered then, in dismay, that he carried a new one, one he had never fired before.d.a.m.n. That did not account for the pain, though.

The thoughts raced through his head between one heartbeat and the next. Another followed, one that could explain both the pain and apparent failure of the gun, but he could not accept it.No, that's just a legend! Besides, this is a hideout, not a dwelling . . . just a hideout!

Wink disappeared from the kitchen doorway and two more shots sounded, this time followed by a man's agonized yell. Garreth could not tell whether the shots came from Wink's .45 or the hot-loaded Special that Harry carried. "Harry!Harry ."

"Don't just stand there!" Rhoades yelled.

The uniformed officer hurled himself at the door, shouldering Garreth aside. A third shot sounded. The aging door gave way under his weight. He hit the floor inside rolling, kept rolling back onto his feet, and vanished through the kitchen doorway.

With pain wrapping him in flame, Garreth pressed at the opening, willing himself through it. The hot metallic/salty reek of blood filled the apartment."Harry, are you all right?"

"Get in here, Mikaelian," Rhoades's voice snapped.

The pain vanished instantly. Garreth stumbled forward, cold with fear. Fear justified. He found Harry sprawled groaning in the middle of the living room while the uniform who had come up the front with him tried to staunch the blood from a hole in the middle of Harry's chest. Garreth saw Wink, too, shoulderwounded and screaming as Rhoades roughly cuffed his hands behind his back, but it was Harry he went to, dropping on his knees and pulling out his handkerchief to use as a compress on the wound.

A hand caught his collar and dragged him back. "What the h.e.l.l were you doing out there?" Rhoades demanded. "If you'd fired when you had the chance, this wouldn't have happened. You froze, didn't you? This turkey shot at you and you lost your nerve!"

"I-" Garreth stared up at him. He could hardly admit his defense, that the apartment was a dwelling and that as a vampire, he could not enter it the first time without an invitation. It appeared that not even a bullet from his gun could violate the barrier around a dwelling.

Rhoades pushed him toward the telephone. "See if you can make yourself use that and call for an ambulance. If we get him to a hospital fast enough, maybe we can still save your partner's life."

Flushing from the lash of the sarcasm, Garreth picked up the phone.

The ambulance took a lifetime to arrive, and every minute of the wait, Garreth sat on the floor holding Harry's head in his lap, silently willing him to live.Hang on, Harry! Dear G.o.d, don't let him die! As though he, unholy creature, had a right to appeal to a power of Good for anything. Wink's complaints that he was bleeding to death, Rhoades's mutter as he read Wink his rights, the anger of the four uniformed officers directed at the one who failed them . . . all existed somewhere beyond Garreth, not touching him. Only Harry felt real, Harry and fury at himself. What a fool he was!See the vampire, funny beast, trying to act like a human. Foolish, certainly, not to have systematically checked out every legendary condition of vampire existence. In the jungle, death is the price of error, only this time Harry might pay the price for Garreth's error.Hang on, Harry. Don't let me destroy you.

He rode with Harry in the ambulance to the hospital and rooted himself in the trauma unit's waiting room, smelling blood everywhere and sickened by it. Lien was not home. He could only give Dispatch the license number of her car and hope that some patrol unit found her before she heard the news on the radio or TV.

"Mikaelian."