Blood Walk Part 43

Holle's room. Garreth sat up. Maybe breaking into the desk was unnecessary.

Pushing to his feet, he hurried down the hall to the bedroom. Technicians still at work glanced around as he came in. He gave them a nod and smile, then made a quick survey of the room. Keys.

There. On the bureau. Holle's keys lay in a bra.s.s tray amid a clutter of loose change, a cigarette lighter, card case, and billfold.

A film of white fingerprint powder smudged the bureau, but Garreth still asked, "Are you finished with those keys?"

A tech nodded without looking up from dusting the bedside table.

Garreth picked up the ring with its bra.s.s tag engravedLEONARD and strolled casually out of the bedroom.

Straight into Harry.

Harry's brows rose. "Looking for me, Mik-san?"

The evasions racing through Garreth's head choked off as he watched Harry's gaze drop to the keys. Holding them up, he said, "I'm hoping there's a key to the desk in the library. It's locked and I'm looking for Hope's address book. So we can check out his friends just in case Lane didn't do this."

"Address book? Good idea." Harry held out his hand.

No! But the protest remained unvoiced. He, the unofficial cop here, the ridealong, had no grounds for protest. Reluctantly, Garreth handed over the keys. He could only ride along some more, d.o.g.g.i.ng Harry's heels to the library, watching while his ex- partner unlocked the desk and found a slim, leatherbound address book in the center drawer.

Harry picked it up and flipped through. "He certainly has a lot of friends."

Garreth ached with the effort of not s.n.a.t.c.hing the book away. "Any corporate or inst.i.tutional affiliations?"

Harry shrugged. "I expect. A man like him is bound to be on the board of museums and service organizations. I'll have a close look later."

Garreth could only swear silently, helplessly, as the book disappeared into the pocket of Harry's suitcoat.

9

After the lab finished at the house, Harry and Garreth joined Girimonte and Fowler in the legwork, trudging through the rain to talk to Holle's neighbors around the block and across the street.

"Just like old times," Harry said with a grin.

Not quite, Garreth reflected unhappily. Harry asked all the questions and kept watching Garreth from the corner of his eye.

By the time everyone had been reached, either at home or by phone at their various offices, midday was ancient history. The four of them headed for a Burger King on Fillmore to dry off and compare notes.

Harry frowned at Garreth's ice tea. "Is that all you're having?"

Garreth gave him a rueful smile. "The way I pigged out last night, I met my caloric requirements for an entire week, maybe the month."

Harry chuckled, but Girimonte's eyes narrowed. A moment later something stirred behind them and she sat back, smiling in satisfaction.

Fear washed through Garreth. She had the expression of someone who has finally found the answer to a nagging question. Had she, like Holle and the housekeeper, identified him for what he was?

Harry poured catsup over his french fries. "So what did you learn from the neighbors, Van?"

"Almost zilch." Girimonte put down her hamburger and opened her notebook. "There aren't many people looking out their windows from three to six in the morning. Except one." She flipped through the notebook. "A Mr. Charles Hanneman who lives directly across the street from Holle. He got up around five to check on his year-old son, who's been ill and was crying. He says he happened to glance out the window while he was carrying the boy around trying to sooth him back to sleep and saw someone on the sidewalk outside the Holle house."

Garreth's heart lurched. Carefully, he sipped his tea. "Then we got lucky for a change."

"Not really, sad to say," Fowler sighed.

"He couldn't say the person came out of the house." Girimonte frowned at her notes. "He couldn't give us much of a description, either, not even the s.e.x. The person was either a tall, lean woman or a slender man . . . shortish hair . . . wearing a warmup suit."

"Color?" Harry asked.

She grimaced. "Something dark . . . green or blue, maybe even red. Hanneman couldn't tell in that light. He didn't really pay much attention. He thought it was just someone out for early exercise, and he's probably right. The person jogged off south, out in the open and making no attempt to hide, according to Hanneman."

Garreth let out his breath.

"We didn't get even that much," Harry said. "There's this, though." He pulled out the address book. "In the interest of completeness, we ought to check Holle's friends."

"In case he includes second story men in his circle?" Girimonte said through a mouthful of hamburger.

"Why does there have to be a burglar?" Fowler asked. He munched a french fry. "Perhaps Holle himself admitted the killer."

Everyone blinked, and Garreth cheered silently. That idea should certainly distract anyone from wondering how a killer could enter a locked door.

"Go on," Harry said.

Fowler took a bite of hamburger. "It's just a theory, mind, but it does explain the apparent lack of forced entry or struggle.

What if Barber rang Holle up yesterday afternoon after he left us, pleading innocent to everything and begging him to help her, and also asking that he not tell anyone about her call. Holle arranged to have her come to the house that night. When he ostensibly went to check the rear door and set the alarm, she was waiting outside. He let her in and sent her up the back stairs to one of the rooms on the top floor."

Harry pursed his lips. "Then she came down later, maybe pleading a need to talk to him. He didn't realize how ugly things were going to get until too late."

"Quite." Fowler finished off his french fries. "Of course, you realize the scenario could fit almost anyone Holle considered a friend. I imagine there are a score of excuses for someone to use to warrant a clandestine entrance . . . abusive husband, a misunderstanding with creditors, a virago of a wife or girlfriend."

Garreth eyed the address book, mind racing. How could he manage a look through it without appearing to care? Maybe . . .

Casually, he said, "In the interest of completeness, I wonder if any of the names in that book will also check out as acquaintances of Ricky Maruska, either social or . . . professional."

"Now there's a thought," Fowler said. "We could ask his roommate."

Harry traced the initialsLEH tooled on the cover. "I'd also like to ask Count Dracula about Lane Barber, now that we suspect she's involved in the murder."

Girimonte washed down the last of her hamburger with her soft drink. "So let's go roust the Count out of his coffin."

10

The only vista the Bay Vista Hotel enjoyed was a slantwise glimpse of the Embarcadero, a frontal view of the warehouse across the street and the elevated traffic of I-80 north beyond that. In the lobby, sagging easy chairs held down a threadbare carpet. A blowsy woman behind the desk divided her attention between a paperback romance and the hystrionics of game show contestants on a small TV at one end of the counter.

Harry flipped open his badge case. "What's Count Dracula's room number?"

"Cute," the woman said without looking up. She turned a page. "I suppose you want Frankenstein's room number, too?"

Harry frowned. "There is a man registered here who calls himself Count Dracula. Thin, pale, fake Balkan accent. Wears a black cape."

"Oh, sure."

Fowler said, "Do you have a guest named Alucard?"

Of course.You should have thought of that, Mikaelian. Especially after taping and watching every vampire movie that showed on the channels Baumen received.

The desk clerk rolled her eyes. "Thatwierdo. Three-oh-six, and if he complains about his room not being made up today, tell him the maid only goes through once and he opens up then or the room don't get done."

With a wink at Harry, Girimonte said in a flat,Dragnet-style voice, "Yes, ma'am; we'll tell him." The narrow stairs creaked a every step. Ribbed rubber glued to the treads flapped loose on several, threatening to trip the unwary climber.

"Fowler," Harry asked back over his shoulder, "where did he come up with the name Alucard, and how did you know about it?"

From behind Garreth the writer said, "Elementary, my dear sergeant, at least to a fan of old horror movies. Alucard-Dracula spelled backward-is an alias used by Lon Chaney's Dracula, so I thought it likely our Count would copy him."

"As he says: elementary, old chap," Girimonte murmured.

They reached the third floor. Harry rapped on the door of 306. "Count, it's the police. Sorry to disturb you but we need to talk to you."

No one came to the door.

After a minute Harry knocked again, harder. "Count?"

No one moved in the room as far as Garreth could tell.

"Count Dracula!" Harry shouted. He pounded the door with a doubled fist. "Open this door!"

"I doubt he'll answer," Fowler said. "Vampires don't move around by daylight, after all."

Girimonte said grimly, "This one will. I'm not coming back at night just to satisfy a f.a.g's idiosyncracies." She hammered on the door hard enough that the numbers shivered. "You! Cupcake! We don't have time to play games. Now open the f.u.c.king door!"

Still no response.

"Let me try," Garreth said. He moved up to the door. "Count, it is possible for you to move around in daylight. Dracula does sometimes in Bram Stoker's book, and Louis Jourdan did in the PBS production ofDracula . It's a beautiful day out, too . . .

raining. There's no sun shining at all."

Harry and Girimonte leaned on each other, choking with laughter. The corners of Fowler's mouth twitched.

The Count, however, remained silent.

Garreth leaned his forehead against the door. "Count, will you please-"

The plea died abruptly in his throat, strangled by a terrible realization: a hotel room, though just a room, became a dwelling for the person in it, yet he felt nothing touching this door, not a flicker of barrier flames. A distinctive odor seeped through the door, too, the same one which had filled Holle's room. "s.h.i.t. Harry, get the pa.s.s key."

They gaped at him. "What?"

"The pa.s.s key! He's dead in there!"

Still they stared. "Dead? How . . ."

"I can smell him!"

Girimonte took off for the stairs like a deer.

Garreth slammed the wall with the side of his fist. Another one. He tried to tell himself that this death might have nothing to do with the others. Considering the Bay Vista's usual clientele, he could have been killed by someone ripping off the room.

When Girimonte came pounding back up the stairs with the key a few minutes later to unlock the door, all possibility of that scenario evaporated. The Count lay stretched on his back on the bed as though in state, dressed in a tuxedo, hands folded across his chest . . . but blood dried to dirty brown covered the pleated shirt and out of the middle of it protruded a shaft of wood.

"Good lord," Fowler said hoa.r.s.ely.

The dead man's head twisted grotesquely to the side, but his expression of terror and pain-eyes popping, mouth stretched open in a soundless shriek, hands frozen into claws-testified that his neck had not been broken until after he had suffered the agony of the stake being pounded into his chest. Like Holle, his hair lay clumped in points on his forehead. The crossed wrists bore abraided grooves where he had fought bonds, grooves like those on Hope's wrists. More abrasions from mouth to ears indicated he had been gagged, too.

Dried blood also covered a pillow on the floor, especially around a hole in the middle of the pillow.

Fury boiled up through Garreth. The dead man's final screams had sunk unheard into his gag, but they must have echoed and reechoed endlessly in his head as the killer laid the pillow over the victim's chest to absorb any splattering blood and pounded in the stake through it. Garreth's head rang with those screams. Lane and Irina, blood mother and daughter indeed. They shared the same taste for inflicting wanton pain. This little man had harmed no one with his fantasy. He certainly did not deserve a death like this.I'm going to find her, Count, just as 1 found Lane. That I promise you.

"The stake's been made from a chair rung," Harry said.

He pointed to a wooden desk chair with a rung missing from between its front legs. Curls of wood from sharpening the rung to a point littered the desk top.

Girimonte disappeared into the bathroom. "The washbowl has the plug in and there's a little water still standing in it. Looks like he got the same treatment Holle did."

"But much earlier." Harry sniffed. "Maybe yesterday."

Girimonte eyed Garreth from the bathroom doorway. "Where were you yesterday, Mikaelian?"

Garreth's breath caught."You know where he was!" Harry snapped. "I found him at home in bed asleep."

"At three o'clock in the afternoon, yes. What about before then?" She raised her brows. "We have hours unaccounted for between the time you left for work and went home after Mikaelian. Maybe he didn't answer the phone not because he sleeps so soundly, but because he wasn't there."

"Van, don't start that again!"

"Harry, why don't you stop burying your head?" Girimonte ticked off points on her fingers. "He fights with a hustler he claims had information about a killer he has very personal reasons for wanting to find, and the hustler dies. Later that day the hustler's roommate is killed, too, with signs of having been tortured, possibly in an effort to gain information. That afternoon someone else connected to our lady killer has words with him and todayhe turns up dead. Also tortured. And this bloodbath started the day after he arrived in town."

"Oh, come now," Fowler began.