Blood Walk Part 44

"This is ridiculous," Garreth said. He intended the statement to be calmly firm, but it emerged with the sharp edges of fear and disbelief he felt. How could anyone seriously think he- "I want to collar Lane so desperately that I commit murder myself? Three innocent civilians? Comeon !"

Girimonte pulled one of her elegant cigars from her breast pocket and lit it. "You come on, Mikaelian. You're dirty. You know a lot more about this case than you're telling anyone. I can smell it."

She was the kind who, believing something, would dig until she got what she was after. He could not afford to have her digging; it would turn up more than she counted on, more than he wanted anyone to know. "Harry, you know me. Straighten her out."

Harry sighed heavily. "A year and a half ago I'd have said I knew you. Now you've changed, Mik-san. I can't guess what you're thinking or feeling anymore. And I can't help feeling that Van's right about one thing . . . killer or not, you do know more than you're telling." The almond eyes slid away from Garreth, dark with unhappiness and profound unease.

1

G.o.d he hated daylight! Today even late afternoon dragged on him with as much force as high noon. Garreth splashed water on his face and pushed himself upright.

The mirrors above the washbasins in the men's room at Bryant Street reflected a face thinner and paler than ever, with eyes smudged by weariness. The eyes he saw, though, were violet, dancing amid the flames of a blazing bridge. Since they had come back from the hotel, his former colleagues in Homicide had been watching him sideways with narrowed eyes, and when they spoke to him it was in the flat voice usually reserved for outsiders. Lane's laughter whispered in his ears.

Fowler came out of a stall behind him. "What b.l.o.o.d.y fools those coppers are!"

Garreth s.n.a.t.c.hed for his gla.s.ses. He had almost forgotten about the writer following him to the men's room. "They're just doing their jobs. As luck would have it, I've been in the wrong places at the wrong time."

"I wonder if luck has had much to do with it." Fowler turned on the water in one basin. The heat of it carried his blood scent toward Garreth. Garreth's stomach cramped with hunger. "Have you considered that for purposes of hanging a frame on you, you've been in exactly the right places at the right times?"

Hunger vanished in dismay. "Frame!"

Fowler rinsed his hands and reached for a paper towel. "Of course. I've been thinking about this a good deal and a frame makes sense of everything. I admit I'm no policeman, only a writer, but that's to my favor. I can recognize a plot when I see one.

Don't you see? The torture wasn't to gain information at all, only to make it look like someone wanted information . . . a role your Miss Barber has carefully tailored to you."

"Why? It doesn't gain her anything:" Even If Lane were alive.

Fowler smiled thinly. "Except revenge, old son. You've seriously inconvenienced her, after all, haven't you . . . making her give up her job and go into hiding, forcing her to move twice, turning friends against her. So now she's returning the favor. It's much nastier than killing you outright. This way she destroys you. Even if you aren't prosecuted or convicted, you'll become a pariah."

But Lane was dead. The same motive fit Irina, though. Since leaving that note at the apartment, she might have found out he killed Lane. He sucked in his breath. "Maybe you're right."

"In which case you'd best find her quickly, before she kills again."

Before another innocent person died. Garreth's mouth thinned. Find her how? The hexagram Lien had thrown for him that morning-only that morning?-ran through his head: if the little fox wets his tail crossing the river, nothing furthers. Thought and caution are necessary for success.

He sighed. "I think I'd be playing into her hands going after her on my own. It's better to lay your theory on Harry and let him check it while I keep low and out of trouble."

"Hang about now!" Fowler snapped. "You're already in trouble, up to your b.l.o.o.d.y eyebrows. And you'll get no help from that lot in the squadroom, either. They're already half convinced by the frame."

"But you're not?" Garreth said sardonically.

Fowler lounged against a washbasin. "No, and I want to help you prove your innocence."

"So you can have a happy ending for the book?"

Fowler jerked upright. "To h.e.l.l with the b.l.o.o.d.y book!"

A uniformed officer coming in the door stopped short and stared at them.

Taking a deep breath, Fowler lowered his voice to a whisper. "You are a b.l.o.o.d.y fool! There's a woman out there trying to put you in the dock and she's got to be stopped! That's all that matters at the moment. Look here; I can help you. I'm a famous writer.

People will talk to me who'd never open their mouths to a copper. And as long as I'm with you, you've got an alibi, haven't you, whatever Barber tries."

Garreth reached up under his gla.s.ses to rub his eyes. They burned. But then, everything else in him ached, too. He sighed. "I'll think about it."

"You do that, old son." Fowler headed for the door. "But don't take long or it may be too late."

2

Garreth told Harry Fowler's theory on the drive home.

Harry bit his lower lip. "It's a possibility. I'd like it to be the case; it'd mean your only involvement is as a fall-guy. Van won't go for it, though. Too complicated. She'll have a point, too; most people in Barber's position would just kill you. Plots like Fowler's suggesting only happen in books and the movies." He paused. "Mik-san, what is it you know you haven't told me about? It might help if you did."

He wished . . . but even if he could feel confident that the resources of the police department would find Irina, not only was there too much risk that they might learn what she was, but Harry could become her next victim. Once before his carelessness had nearly killed Harry. That must not happen again.

In the interest of appearing cooperative, though, maybe he could risk a partial truth.

He shrugged. "It's nothing, just one of Grandma Doyle's Feelings. I'm not even sure how you'd act on it. She warned me to beware of a violet-eyed woman. I . . . asked Holle if the woman asking for Lane had violet eyes."

"And?"

"He claimed he never noticed their color. When I asked him if he were sure, he acted like I'd accused him of lying."

"That was the ha.s.sle?" Harry shook his head. "Why didn't you say so before?"

"I'm not about to drag my grandmother out in front of your partner and Fowler to be ridiculed or turned into a character in a book."

Did Harry believe that? Garreth could not tell. Harry smiled, but said nothing more, only drove the rest of the way home in silence.

Until they pulled into the drive. Then as they climbed out, he looked at Garreth across the top of the car. "There's no point in upsetting Lien with the . . . problems in this case, so-"

"I don't want to distress her with the fact that I'm a suspect, either, Harry," Garreth interrupted.

"Thanks."

Lien met them at the door, shaking her head in mock exasperation.

"I don't know why I bother cooking for you two. Everything is mummified by the time you finally come home. It would make more sense to wait until I see you, then send out for pizza or make a quick run to the Colonel for fried chicken."

Harry kissed her soundly. "Think how dull life would be if you always knew where I'd be and when."

"You might start taking him for granted," Garreth teased.

For a moment the laughter died out of her eyes. She reached out to touch Harry's cheek. "Never."

In the one word Garreth heard her morning ritual withI Ching -"Will my husband be safe today?"-and the memory of that terrible wait in the emergency room to learn if Harry would live or die.

A moment later she laughed again. "Come along, honorable husband, honored guest; your tea is waiting."

She served it in the family room as always, but instead of sitting down to enjoy it, they followed her into the dining room and kitchen, joking with each other and her. Garreth pretended to sip from his cup, then set it down and "forgot" it as he helped her set the table. Without actually talking shop, Harry filled dinner with a string of anecdotes about people seen or interviewed during the day, mimicking some like Fowler and the clerk at the Bay Vista Hotel with wicked accuracy.

"It was great being partners with Garreth again, right Mik-san?"

"Right." Garreth wished his tea had no brandy in it so he could drink it. As the kitchen and dining room filled with blood scents, his stomach cramped in a savage hunger that burned all the way up his throat. "Like old times." He gulped down his gla.s.s of water. It eased the pangs a little. "How was your day?"

"I had my children's art cla.s.s this afternoon." She launched into stories about teaching drawing and painting.

As she talked, however, she kept glancing from Harry to him with a searching gaze that dropped his stomach toward his feet.

Did she suspect something?

His answer came at the end of dinner. He picked up his plate and started to stand and carry it into the kitchen.

She reached across to catch his arm. "That can wait, Garreth. All right, you two; tell me what's wrong."

Harry regarded her innocently. "Wrong? What do you mean?"

She stared into him. "I mean you've come home running a relentless two-man comedy routine, but you're just picking over your beef stroganoff and Garreth hasn't eaten any at all. Every time you do that, something has happened you don't want me to find out about because you think it will upset me. Once it was a knife wound on your arm. Another time the two of you had fought over whether to release a suspect you felt sure was guilty but didn't have the evidence to hold. What this time?"

"There's nothing-" Harry began.

Garreth interrupted, "Girimonte and I mix like gasoline and matches." He should have remembered. Lien always knew when they dragged home psychological baggage. So give her some to chew over.

Lien eyed them both for a minute, then nodded. "Yes, I can imagine, and my poor Harry is caught in the middle, not sure which to side with, old partner or new partner."

After reaching over to pat Harry's arm, she appeared satisfied and let the subject drop. They washed dishes and adjourned to the TV to watch the news, then to groan and hoot at police procedure as portrayed on the late-night rerun of a cop show.

Garreth slipped out to the refrigerator in the kitchen during the show. He drank straight from the thermos, but even as he gulpied down the blood, his appet.i.te continued to snarl in frustration at every maddeningly unsatisfying swallow. The memory of Holle's refrigerator taunted him.

A sound in the dining room warned him that he was about to have company. Blood scent drifting around him told him who.

Moving casually, he crossed to the sink and rinsed out the thermos. Hunting time again tonight. "Hi, Lien."

From behind him she said, "You're still using that liquid protein diet you were on when you left San Francisco? Do you ever eat anything else?"

He glanced over his shoulder. "Of course." Water rinsed the last traces of blood down the drain. "I just wasn't hungry tonight."

She leaned against the kitchen door. "Harry's gone up to get ready for bed. I don't suppose you'll tell me what the real problem between the two of you is."

He set the thermos upside down on the drainboard to dry and turned to face her. "I can't."

Her forehead furrowed. "Or what the problem eating you up inside is? Before you left San Francisco, remember, I told you I wished I could help you. I still want to."

"I wish you could, but . . . no one can. It's something I have to work out for myself."

"That's what you said last time, but you obviously haven't worked it out yet. Why can't you tell me? You let me help when Marti died, and you came here when you ran away from the hospital after that Barber girl tried to kill you." She paused. "I dream about you, Garreth. I reach out to touch you and I can't. You're so far away . . . farther and farther each time."

All her dream lacked was the burning bridge. Longing grawed at him to tell her everything.

But he could visualize her reaction . . . disbelief first, then concern as she decided he had gone bonkers. He imagined proving himself by showing her how his fangs extended, and how he could move through shut doors. Then disbelief would turn to horror and revulsion, and worst of all, to fear of him. He could not bear that.

He made himself smile. "Don't let a stupid nightmare upset you. I'll be fine."

She ran a hand through her hair. "While I waited for you two to come home tonight, I threw tomorrow's hexagrams. Yours was number Twenty-nine, The Abysmal. If you are sincere, you have success in your heart and whatever you do succeeds."

He eyed her, stomach knotting. "So why aren't you smiling?"

She bit her lip. "A change line in the third place means that every step, forward or backward, leads into danger. There is no escape. You must wait for the way out."

Cold ran down his spine. "No escape? The change line makes a second hexagram. Does it offer a solution?"

She shook her head. "Number Forty-eight, The Well, is a bit esoteric, but in this context, I think it reinforces the first hexagram."

Cold ate deeper. Every step leads into inescapable danger. But he could not afford to wait it out. He had to find Irina before more people died and what remained of his bridge collapsed into ashes.

3

That thought echoed in Garreth's head all night. Even in the exhausting light of morning, sitting on Harry's desk with the squadroom's stew of tobacco smoke, coffee, aftershave, and blood scents washing around him and Centrello droning through an update of his and Faye's cases, urgency drummed at Garreth. Find the violet-eyed vampire.

His gut knotted. Of course, if he did he courted disaster, according toI Ching and his grandmother's Feeling. But retreat meant danger, too, and surely it was better to meet danger head-on than in retreat.

The question still remained of how to find her, and no matter how often he asked it, now or last night while slipping out of the house to Golden Gate Park to fill his thermos from a horse in the police stable-a closer source of blood than the rats on the waterfront-one answer came up: the number the housekeeper phoned. A number somewhere in the address book Harry had locked in his desk last night.

The reporting voice became Harry's. ". . . call from a p.a.w.nshop owner last night. He left a message. A watch like the one taken from the liquor store clerk during the robbery has turned up at his shop. Van and I will check it out this morning once she's back from prying the autopsy report on Maruska out of the coroner's office. Holle and Count Dracula-whose name we're still trying to learn-should be posted today or tomorrow. That open window at Holle's isn't going to help us make a case against anyone. The lab found no evidence of forcible entry and the only prints belong to the housekeeper and another woman who cleans part time. It looks like the killer spotted and took advantage of a window someone left open."

"Let's hope he left more in the bedroom then," Serruto said. "Your turn, Kolb."

The front of the top desk drawer felt slick and cool under the sliding exploration of Garreth's fingers. He touched the handle, tried it tentatively. Locked. His hand itched with the desire to wrench the drawer open. A glance around, though, found Fowler eyeing him and he pulled the hand back to shove it in the pocket of his coat.

Kolb finished her report. Serruto nodded. "That's it, then. Carry on, as our esteemed author-in-residence might say." He poured himself a cup of coffee and vanished into his office.