Blood Walk Part 42

Girimonte stopped in midstride heading for the library door and turned, frowning. Harry hesitated visibly, too, but said, "All right."

The housekeeper followed them into the hall. As they reached the stairs, however, Fowler started up after her and Garreth.

Garreth waved him away. Gowith the others, he mouthed.

Fowler's brows rose, but after a moment, he turned and trotted downstairs after Girimonte.

Garreth and the housekeeper continued on to the attic alone, where he began checking windows, starting with those in the rear bedroom. He pulled aside the heavy drapes. The window was firmly latched.

Outside, the sun no longer shone so brightly, he noted with relief. Clouds had begun rolling in from the west to darken the sky.

It would be raining by noon.

He dropped the drapes back in place. "Where did Irina go?"

The housekeeper started. "Who?"

Garreth sighed. "Don't you play that game with me, too. This was her room. It still smells of her perfume." He pulled off his gla.s.ses. "When did she leave and where's she gone?"

She hissed and spun away. "Don't you try that with me! The agreement is that your kind will respect the rules of hospitality in this house. You take no advantage and touch no one."

So she, too, recognized him for what he was. "Then talk to me."

She glanced around cautiously, eyes narrow. "What do you want with Miss Rudenko?"

Rudenko! So that was the name Irina used now. He put the gla.s.ses back on. "I couldn't very well mention it in front of the other officers but we know she can easily come in and leave without disturbing either the alarms or door bolts."

The housekeeper turned on him scornfully. "That's ridiculous! Mr. Holle and Miss Rudenko are-" Her eyes filled. She groped in her pocket for another tissue and wiped her eyes. "They were friends."

Friends? With a vampire? Knowingly? Garreth wished he had time to pursue the question. "Friends fight and fall out. Irina left very suddenly, didn't she?"

The lady did not shake easily. Give her that. "It had nothing to do with any disagreement." She blew her nose. "Shouldn't you be checking the other windows in case you're wrong about who came in last night?"

Exasperation hissed through Garreth. What hold did Irina have that kept these people so closemouthed? Promises of immortality, like Dracula gave the wretched Renfield? He smiled thinly. "Maybe you should start thinking up explanations to give Sergeant Takananda about why you keep bottles of human blood in your refrigerator and where it comes from." Wheredid it come from?

Not even that rattled her. She just sniffed. "Blackmail? You're wasting the effort. I really don't know where Miss Rudenko is."

Her voice carried a ring of truth. Garreth sighed and headed for the door. "Let's check the other windows."

Those in the bedrooms were all secure with no signs of tampering. As expected.

"There are two storage rooms," the housekeeper said. "Shall I unlock them?"

A quick vision of finding footprints in the dust and having the crime lab identify them as his flashed through Garreth's head. He eyed the dead bolt on each door. "Do they unlock from the inside?"

"No."

"Then I think we can skip those windows. No one could get out into the rest of the house except . . . someone like me."

Not quite true, but if he mentioned someone could open the doors from the inside by pulling the hinge pins, she might insist on examing the store rooms. He headed down the stairs to the third floor.

The windows on that floor were all locked, too, including those in the housekeeper's rooms. Ms. Edlitza kept a cross above her bed, the Eastern Orthodox type with a double crossbar.

Garreth raised his brows. "Insurance?"

Her mouth thinned. "No, religion. Insurance would be an atomizer full of garlic juice."

Mace, vampire style. Just the thought of the scent left Garreth feeling suffocated.

A whoop went up in the hall. He and the housekeeper raced out to find Fowler at a window by the back stairs. "It's unlocked!"

Harry and Girimonte came pounding up from the second floor.

Fowler used a pen to push open the window and leaned out without touching anything. "There's nothing but wall below, though.

You'd need b.l.o.o.d.y wings to reach it."

Girimonte looked out the window, too. "No, I'd say he let himself down from the roof. Standard technique. Isn't that what you learned in Burglary, Mikaelian?"If anyone had actually come in the window. Garreth was willing to bet that Irina opened it from the inside to satisfy human investigators with an obvious entry point for an intruder.

Harry said, "We'd better get someone up here to dust for prints."

The housekeeper squeezed past them down the back stairs. "How rea.s.suring to know we're not dealing with someone who walks through bolted doors. I think I'll make myself some tea."

The rest of them headed down the front stairs.

In Holle's room Bill Yoshino nodded at Harry's request for a technician. "Sure thing. Linda," he called to one of the team brushing fingerprint powder on the faucet handles in the adjacent bathroom, "you go when you're finished there. Glad you've come, Harry. I was about to send a uniform for you. We have a couple of things that ought to interest you."

The smells of living blood overlaid that of death, though not enough to mask it completely. The combination sent a small wave of nausea through Garreth.

An a.s.sistant M.E., an Hispanic woman, leaned over the body on the bed. She looked around as everyone trooped in. "Good morning, Sergeant Takananda. Gruesome. Is this one tied to that midnight cowboy Mitch Welton posted yesterday? The injuries look alike."

"The two could be related."

"Then maybe this one is a Martian, too. That will-"

Harry started. "Martian?"

The a.s.sistant M.E. grinned. "That's Dr. Thurlow's name for people with the certain anomalies. Mitch was all excited about the ones he found in his stiff. He was going to write it up for journal publication. Then Dr. Thurlow said there've been three others like him in the past ten years."

"What anomalies?" Fowler asked.

Head them off at the pa.s.s, man."Harry, look," Garreth said. He touched a vertical cut above Holle's left eye. "Did he do it or did the killer hit him?"

"I'm more curious about the time of death," Girimonte said.

The a.s.sistant M.E. shrugged. "He hasn't been dead more than a few hours. The body's still warm and there's no rigor except in his jaw and neck."

"It happened after the party folded, then." Girimonte raised a brow at Garreth.

Harry's forehead furrowed. He turned toward Yoshino. "You wanted to show me something?"

"Yeah." Yoshino pointed at Holle's arms. "Look at his wrists, first off."

A narrow, abraided groove circled each. Garreth bit his lip. At some point Holle had been tied tightly with something thin, like drapery cord, and struggled desperately against his bonds.

"Look at this, too." Yoshino pointed at the hair coming down over Holle's forehead. It lay in clumped points. "It's been wet.

The pillow under him is still damp."

Harry felt the pillow. "What else?"

"In the bathroom." Yoshino led the way through the connecting door into a bathroom the size of a small ballroom, lushly carpeted in blue s.h.a.g that covered even the steps around two sides of the sunken tub. "We've got more water in here . . . a soggy rug in front of the washbowl, and marks where splashes on the counter and mirror have dried."

Harry knelt down to feel the carpet. "He didn't do this brushing his teeth."

"Uh-uh. We also collected skin and blood off the edge of the faucet. I'd say that's where your dead man cut his forehead."

"Christ," Fowler whispered down at Garreth. "Shadow Games."

Harry snapped around. "What?"

Fowler grimaced sheepishly. "One of my books. There's a point in it where the protagonist Charlie Quayle needs information from one of the villain's henchmen he's captured. He gets it by filling up the washbowl in his hotel room and dunking the henchman until he's almost drowned."

And that had happened to Holle. Anger flared in Garreth. It was so pointless. Why resort to torture when a little hypnotic persuasion would make Holle answer any question Irina asked? Or did she have to use force because Holle, like the housekeeper, knew how to resist? Garreth felt sick. If he had only thought of using his own hypnotic powers on the person on the stairs this morning and stayed long enough for a confrontation. He would have met Irina instead of a curious guest, of course, and they might have clashed as he had with Lane. Irina being even older and more experienced than Lane, this time he would probably have lost the duel, but . . . Holle might still be alive.

"The killer wanted information?" Girimonte asked. She frowned at Harry. "That doesn't fit Barber. Why should she have to torture information out of a man who's been her friend and caretaker? What kind of information could she want anyway?" Her gaze slid toward Garreth. "It doesn't fitBarber ."

Harry stiffened.

Did she ever let up? Garreth wondered angrily. "Why don't you can it, Girimonte."

Harry sighed. "Both of you can it." He frowned. "The killer tortured Holle and Holle struggled, but the only signs of it are in here. Because he knew, and trusted, the person, and didn't realize his danger until he was in here and it was too late?That would fit Barber."

The a.s.sistant M.E. appeared in the bathroom doorway. "If you're finished with the body, we'll take it now, Sergeant."

"Fine." Harry watched from the door while they zipped Holle into a body bag and wheeled out the stretcher, then turned away, grimacing. "So much for the fun part. It's time to talk to the neighbors, partner. One of us needs to stay here until Yoshino and his people are finished, though, so how do you want to handle it? Flip a coin?"

She stretched with a cat's grace. "You're the sergeant. You stay. I'll hit the bricks. Want to come along, Mr. Fowler?"

"Too right!" The writer grinned. "Just let's stop at the car first long enough to pick up my mac. The heavens look ready to open any moment."

Harry and Garreth followed the other two out into the hall, where Harry leaned on the railing watching them trot down the staircase and across the hall out the front door. "She's a good cop, Mik-san."

"She certainly has her ideas about who the killer is."

It came out more acid than Garreth intended. Harry straightened abruptly. "You have to admit you've been in some wrong places at the wrong times. She's raised some good points, too. Why would Lane torture Holle for information?What information?"

The same questions applied to Irina, unfortunately. Could some other vampire be involved, one with other interests here, someone he did not know?

"As computers say, Harry-san:Insufficient data. Will not compute. The housekeeper said she was making tea. Shall I see if I can talk her into some for us?"

Harry shook his head. "None for me, but you go ahead. You didn't have breakfast and I expect it's going to be a long time until lunch."

Garreth found the housekeeper at a table in the kitchen with tea, but crying over it, not drinking it. He touched her shoulder.

"I'm sorry to bother-"

She started violently. Jumping up, she snapped, "Why don't you people ever walk so someone can hear you!"

He sighed. "I'm sorry. Ms. Edlitza, do you meet many of my kind?"

"What's many? I meet some." She bustled away toward the sink with her teacup. "Mostly they're the same ones over and over, like Miss Rudenko. She's been visiting since I was a child and my parents were part of a full staff here." A fat raindrop hit the window over the sink, followed by another, and another, until it streamed down the window in a sheet.

"Irina and who else?"

Water blasted into the sink. Rain hammered on the window. "Are you trying to involve others in this, too?"

He hissed in exasperation. "What I'm trying to do is find out who killed Mr. Holle!"

Her head bent suddenly. Her shoulders heaved in a soundless sob.

The anger leaked out of Garreth. He sighed. "Ms. Edlitza, I need to meet some of the others, and I don't know how or where."

Her fingers twined together. She studied them as if searching for something there. After a minute she looked up. "I'm sorry, I can't help you. I'm not one of their circle, just a servant."

Instinct told him that she was lying . . . but since she appeared to be experienced at resisting vampire powers, what could he do short of using force to get the truth? G.o.d knew there had been enough of that in this house already. "All right. Thank you."

He left the kitchen. As the door closed behind him, he heard her move quickly across the kitchen in his direction and he halted.

She was not coming after him, however. Her steps stopped on the other side of the door, followed by the sound of a phone receiver lifting.

Garreth plastered himself against the door. Closing his eyes, he strained to hear. There. He could just hear the dial tones, four of one digit, one of another, two of a third. He listened for the voice answering on the other end, but that came through too faintly to make out more than a murmur, though. The voice said something longer thanh.e.l.lo, and a rising tone indicated a question.May I help you , perhaps?

All he could really hear was the housekeeper's end of the conversation, "This is Mr. Holle's housekeeper. I'd like to leave a message for Miss Rudenko. Ask her to call me, please . . . Yes . . . it's very important. Thank you."

As he heard her hang up, Garreth hurried away from the door. It would not help to have her catch him listening. He headed for the hall extension to try working out the number while the tones remained fresh in his head.

But Holle's guests sat in the living room in full view of the phone. He sighed in regret. Better not play with the phone now. It would arouse their curiosity, and Harry's if he happened to look over the railing. The directory on the shelf under the phone gave him an idea, however. Squating down in front of the table, he checked the covers on all three sections of the directory. A number the housekeeper could dial without having to look up and expect the person answering to know Holle's name must be noted somewhere.

A sheet of paper taped inside the front cover of the white pages bore a typed list of phone numbers. Garreth scanned them quickly, only to grimace in disappointment. They were only those a visitor might be interested in: numbers for cab companies and airlines; for theatre, ballet, and opera ticket offices; for museums and galleries.He returned the white pages to the shelf and stood up. Holle must keep his personal numbers somewhere else. The library, maybe. A phone sat on the desk there.

Giving the guests a bland smile as he turned away from the phone table, Garreth trotted up the stairs and along the hall to the library.

The ma.s.sive old desk looked like two pushed back to back, with a tunnel of a knee hole and drawers on both sides. The five drawers facing into the room contained the standard desk-drawer clutter of paper, pens, and such. But no address book. The drawers on the back side would not open when he pulled on their handles.

Garreth slumped back in the big executive chair, frowning at the locked drawers and listening to the rain hammer the window behind him. Now what? The desk had been carefully built. The s.p.a.ce along the top of the drawers looked too narrow for using either the paper knife or rulers from the front drawers to slip the locks. He needed x-ray vision, or the skill of TV's private eye/white knights of justice, who could pick locks like these with a bent paper clip in five seconds.

Harry's voice carried from downstairs, explaining that he wanted to fingerprint the guests and housekeeper as a way of eliminating their prints from those lifted in Holle's room.