Blood Walk Part 41

"No. There's a temporary address for him in Centrello's notes. We'll look it up when we get to Bryant Street."

7

From the doorway of his office, Serruto eyed his inspectors sardonically. "Ah, the cast fromDawn of the Dead , I see. It must have been quite a bash, Takananda. Not without benefits, either. I see our hotshot author hasn't managed to make it in. Let's wish him a long, undisturbed rest while we grab our cups of strong black coffee and go to work." He strolled out to sit down on a desk in the middle of the room and read the list of cases that had come in overnight. In the middle of facts about a cab driver's knifing, he glanced up and broke off with a solicitous, "I'm not keeping you awake, am I, Bennigan?"

The offending detective opened his eyes with a start and dragged himself upright in his chair. "I was just concentrating on what you're saying, sir."

"Good. Then you and Roth can handle this knifing."

After reviewing and a.s.signing the rest of the overnights, Serruto had each team give a brief update on their current cases.

A bright-eyed, rested-looking Girimonte reported for Harry and herself. "No breaks on the liquor store shooting yet, and no ID on the woman in Stow Lake. Which now looks like an accidental drowning. The autopsy found water in her lungs and a high level of alcohol in her blood. The autopsy on our hustler wasn't done until late yesterday afternoon so there's no official report yet, but I stopped by the morgue on my way up this morning and got some preliminary findings from the a.s.sistant M.E. who did the post."

Cold shot through Garreth. He had not thought about autopsies on vampires before. What internal differences were there? Any that might generate dangerous curiosity?

He waited tensely while the black woman pulled a notebook from the pocket of her suit jacket and flipped it open. "The victim died of a severed spinal cord. No surprises there. And the reason there wasn't much blood from the slashed throat was because it was cut after death."

"Which fits Barber's MO," Harry said.

Serruto raised a brow. "Not quite. Mossman and Adair died of blood loss, remember?Both the broken necks and cutting their throats and wrists came after death."

"Maruska wasn't bled out like the other victims, either," Girimonte said.

"She had a different reason for killing Maruska . . . self-preservation."

Girimonte sent a glance at Garreth. "We don't know that. There's no evidence definitely linking Barber to the murder."

Harry scowled. "We-"

"This is a briefing, not a debate," Serruto said shortly. "Go on, Inspector."

She glanced back at her notes "There isn't much else. The doc is excited about some internal anomalies, but he says they're unrelated to the cause of death. He found severe pulmonary edema and edema of the throat and nasal pa.s.sages, which also doesn't appear to be connected to the cause of death but which he can't account for. That's it."

What anomalies? Garreth bit his lip. An unanswerable question at the moment. He had enough to worry about anyway with Girimonte sending suspicious glances at him and Harry frowning at her.

When Serruto dismissed them and returned to his office, Harry turned on Girimonte. "We have evidence that implicates Barber.

And if we ask the roommate about red-haired women-"

"Excuse me," a hesitant voice interrupted. "A detective by the door said two of you are the detectives in charge of the case of a woman found in Stow Lake Sunday night?"

They all turned. A young brunette woman in a ski sweater and blue jeans stood twisting the strap of her shoulder bag."I'm Sergeant Takananda," Harry said. "This is Inspector Girimonte. Do you know something about the case?"

The young woman drew a deep breath. "I think I know who she is."

Girimonte pulled a chair over by Harry's desk. "Please sit down."

Across the room, the door from the hall opened and Julian Fowler came in. He looked as impeccably dressed and groomed as ever but the writer walked, Garreth noted, like a man carrying a bomb. Or wearing one?

Garreth left Harry and Girimonte with the brunette to meet the writer. "Good morning, Mr. Fowler."

Fowler leaned against a handy desk and closed his eyes. "I think not. Lord. Do American coppers really party like that all the time?"

"Oh, no," Garreth said solemnly. "Sometimes we get wild."

The pale eyes opened to glare at him. "Don't be cheeky. I wonder if your lieutenant would mind if I helped myself to a spot of coffee?"

"He isn't my lieutenant, so go ahead."

Fowler almost dropped the cup, though. Garreth took it away and poured the coffee for him. Harry and Girimonte left the squad room with the brunette, probably taking her to the morgue to identify the body.

They came back a short time later. The brunette had gone pale. Shaking, she sat down again. While Harry fed a report form into his typewriter, Girimonte stalked over to the coffee pot.

"Sometimes I wonder why we bother to protect the public. We ought to just sit back and let natural selection weed the stupidity from the population."

"What happened?" Garreth asked.

She grimaced. "A bunch of grad students from the U of San Francisco were drinking Sunday night. They thought it would be fun to go swimming. No one counted heads before or after, and it took until today, when the professor she works for started b.i.t.c.hing because she wasn't there to teach a lab for him and grade some papers, for them to start wondering where she was and remember that there'd been 'something in the paper Monday about a dead woman in a lake.' Christ."

"Yes, but, well, it does clear the case, as you say, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. It clears the case." She carried the coffee back to the brunette.

In another ten minutes the statement was finished and the shaken citizen gone. Harry said, "Let's visit Count Dracula."

Fowler perked up. "I beg your pardon?"

Girimonte smiled thinly. "Our dead hustler's roommate. A weirdo. Perfect for your book."

Harry dug the case folder out of his desk and flipped through the reports in it. "Here's his temporary address: the Bay Vista Hotel."

Girimonte grimaced. "That fleabag."

"I dare say it isn't easy for a vampire to find accommodations," Fowler said.

Snickering, they headed for the door.

They had not been out of the parking lot five minutes, however, when a message came over the radio for Harry to phone Serruto. They stopped at the first public phone.

A grim-faced Harry came back to the car. "Van, forget Count Dracula and head for Holle's place."

A cold trickle of foreboding moved down Garreth's spine. "What's up, Harry?"

"It's what's gone down." Harry slammed the car door closed. "Holle's housekeeper just found him dead in bed . . . his throat slashed and his neck broken."

8

From the doorway, Holle appeared to be merely asleep, lying on his back in bed, the blankets pulled up to his chin. To Garreth, however, the reek of blood, stagnant and clotting in death, pervaded the room, and on second glance, peering over Harry's shoulder, the pillow showed red stains.

Fowler craned his neck to see over Girimonte. "That isn't much blood for a slashed throat. It ought to be everywhere."

"Not if the killer drained Holle dry first, or used the knife after the victim was dead," Harry said. He turned toward the housekeeper hovering tearfully in the hall where she could not see into the bedroom. "Ms. Edlitza, I can understand you coming up to check on him when he slept so much later than usual, and going in and realizing he wasn't breathing, but why are you so sure his neck is broken and his throat cut?"

She choked out: "I saw the bloodstain, and-" Her voice broke. "And I looked under the covers."

Harry exchanged quick glances with Girimonte. "Only one of us better go in. I'll do it. Ms. Edlitza," he suggested gently, "why don't you go join the others in the library now?" When she had gone, he crossed to the bed and lifted one side of the blankets.

"Good G.o.d," Fowler whispered.Garreth swallowed.

Under the blankets, Holle's body lay face down. A wound gaped in the throat, pulled into a spiral by the near one-eighty twist of the neck.

"Arguing with you is becoming fatal, Mikaelian," Girimonte said. "You didn't happen to be restless and out driving after the party last night, did you?"

Anger flared at the acid edge on her voice. "I was home sleeping it off like everyone." Beneath the anger, however, consternation churned in him. Irina. It had to be Irina doing this, logic said, though why she could be so desperate to cover her tracks he still had no idea.Lane, his gut insisted.She has the motive, Mikaelian. But how could it possibly be Lane?

His only answer was her laughter echoing in his head.

Harry dropped the blankets back into place. "Van-" he began sharply, only to glance at Fowler and break off. Torn between loyalty to his old partner and the desire to avoid arguing with the new one in front of an outsider?

That, too, Garreth reflected, but something else also showed in the almond eyes, something new that tightened his throat . . .

uncertainty. In his head, he watched the fires on the bridge blaze higher.

The doorbell rang downstairs. Over the hall railing, Garreth saw one of the uniformed officers from the black-and-white responding to the initial call open the door. The team from the crime lab trooped in with its equipment.

"Up here, Yoshino," Harry called down. "If you need us, send a uniform to the library. Where we'll be listening to what our witnesses have to say before we make accusations, right, partner?" he said to Girimonte, and headed up the hall toward the front of the house.

Today the library looked incongruously cheerful. Someone had opened the drapes and light flooded the room. Three guests waited with the housekeeper: an attractive dark-haired woman and a young couple who looked pasty-pale under their tans and sun-streaked hair.

Garreth moved around the walls to stand by the fireplace, as far from the windows as possible.

Harry slid the doors closed. "Thank you for waiting. I'm Sergeant Takananda. This is Inspector Girimonte, Officer Mikaelian, and Mr. Fowler. Mr. Fowler is a writer riding along with us to do research for a book. Does anyone have objections to talking with him present?"

After a quick glance at each other, the guests and housekeeper shook their heads.

Harry smiled. "Then shall we begin? You are?" He pointed first at the darkhaired woman, then the couple.

"Susan McCaul. That's spelled M-C-C-A-U-L."

"Alan and Heather Osner," the man said.

"You're all guests and were sleeping in the house last night?"

They nodded.

"When did you last see Mr. Holle?"

"As everyone was leaving for the ballet," the housekeeper said. She fished a sodden tissue out of her dress pocket and mopped at a new flood of tears.

McCaul bit her lip. "We all got back about one-thirty. He bolted the front door and was headed in the direction of the kitchen when I went upstairs to my room."

Osner nodded. "He said he was going to check the rear door and turn on the security system."

"I heard him coming up the back stairs a little later," Osner's wife said.

"Did anyone see or talk to him after that?" Girimonte asked.

They shook their heads.

Harry said, "What sounds did you hear later on in the night? We need to know all of them, even something you might think is insignificant."

"I didn't hear anything," McCaul said. "I went to bed and d-" She broke off, throat working, then a breath or two later, stumbled on in a strained voice: "I went straight to sleep. The next thing I heard was-was Ms. Edlitza screaming."

"Me, too," Mrs. Osner said.

Her husband nodded. "I slept straight through."

The hair raised on Garreth's neck. "None of you woke up? Not for any reason? No one made a middle-of-the-night trip to the bathroom?"

"No." They shook their heads.

Then unless one of them was lying or walked in his sleep, the footsteps Garreth heard had to belong to the killer. They sounded again in his head, a stealthy whisper on the stairs from the third floor. G.o.d. He had fled from them and left Holle alone to die.

"Ms. Edlitza," Girimonte asked the housekeeper, "were all the doors still bolted this morning?"

The housekeeper nodded.

"What about the security system?"

"On and functioning."

"But someone got in past everything." Garreth raised a brow at Harry. "Maybe we ought to find out how."Girimonte snapped her notebook shut. "I'll check the ground floor."

"And I'll take this one," Harry said. He recorded the home addresses of the three guests, then smiled politely at them and the housekeeper. "Thank you all very much for your cooperation. That should be it for now, except I do ask that you please keep out of the areas our officers and crime lab have marked off until we've finished examining them for evidence."

Garreth caught the housekeeper's eye. "I'll check the upper floors, if Ms. Edlitza will be kind enough to guide me."