Night Of The Living Dandelion Part 31

The paramedic was easy to spot. He had light red hair worn short and a square face covered in freckles. He had on a blue Windbreaker, jeans, and athletic shoes, and appeared to be physically fit.

I maneuvered to the counter to order a hot dark chocolate drink, then asked to have it delivered to my table. Then I headed for the table.

"J.C.? I'm Abby. My partner, Marco, called you to set up this meeting."

"Hi," he said, jumping up to pull out a chair, clearly surprised by my appearance. "Have a seat."

"Thanks. Marco will be in as soon as he finds a parking s.p.a.ce."

"How'd you hurt your foot?"

"Actually it's a sprained ankle. I fell off my high heel."

J.C. shook his head. "I keep telling my girlfriend she's gonna hurt herself on those tall heels, but she never listens to me."

I waited while the barista delivered my cocoa. J.C. already had a coffee drink loaded with whipped cream. "Thanks for meeting with us so late. We're helping investigate the Willis murder, and at the same time do our day jobs. It gets hectic at times."

"I hear you on that." He tried to come off as friendly, but I noticed that his smile was tight and one of his knees bobbed. "So how does your investigation involve me?"

I blinked at him. I hadn't planned anything because I thought Marco would be handling it. "Well," I said, stalling, "we were told that you responded to a call at the Calumet Casino boat last Tuesday evening and wondered if you'd noticed anyone out of the ordinary hanging around the parking lot."

That was lame, Abby.

J.C. sipped his coffee, regarding me with narrowed eyes, as though he didn't believe me. So I played dumb, something else that came naturally. "I've got the date right on that call, haven't I? Tuesday? Around nine o'clock in the evening?"

"Yeah, I think it was Tuesday. We got a nine-one-one about a possible heart attack. Turned out to be a false alarm. But as for seeing anyone out of the ordinary, what are you looking for?"

"A person in a black trench coat, with very white skin and black hair worn slicked back. There were reports of him being seen in the parking lot that evening."

"It sounds like you're looking for the New Chapel vampire."

I smiled. "If there is such a thing."

J.C. took a drink of coffee, then licked cream off his lips. "I wish I had seen the guy. My partner keeps telling me to stop by Down the Hatch to take a look at him."

"Who's your partner?" Me playing dumb again.

"Kyle Petrie."

"Oh, sure. I know Kyle from the bar. He's a nice guy, but he's got it wrong. The man he told you about isn't a vampire."

J.C. shrugged, as though to say, Whatever. "Kyle's convinced the guy killed that nurse."

"What makes him think that?"

"The way the woman was murdered. Bite marks in the jugular vein. Blood drained from the body. Who else would do that?"

"Maybe a guy who wanted it to look like the work of a vampire?"

J.C. sipped his coffee. I could tell he was turning the matter over in his mind.

Marco came up to the table and tossed his car keys down. "Hey, J.C.," he said, sticking out his hand. "Marco Salvare. Thanks for coming down."

They shook hands, and Marco sat next to me and put his arm around my shoulders. "I found a parking s.p.a.ce right around the corner. No problem." He tapped on my shoulder with his thumb on the last two words. I took it to mean he hadn't seen Kyle.

I could sense that J.C. was uncomfortable being there with us, so I decided to speed things up and at the same time make Marco aware of the groundwork I'd laid. "J.C. just told me he didn't notice anyone matching our suspect's description in the casino parking lot last Tuesday evening. And he also verified that he made an emergency call there on Tuesday evening."

Marco nodded, as though absorbing the information. "Do you get a lot of calls from the casino?"

"No, not really. And that one turned out to be a false alarm. I wish we had more of those and fewer genuine heart attacks."

"So, even though it might be a false alarm," Marco asked, "is it SOP to respond as though it's a life-or-death situation?"

"Sure."

"Does that mean carrying in your emergency equipment?" Marco asked.

"Of course. We can't waste time running back to the van when seconds count."

Marco took a sip of my cocoa. "Do you always work in pairs?"

"Yes, we do."

"So how does that work? Does one of you go into the building with the emergency equipment while the other stays with the ambulance?"

"Not usually, not unless there's a reason for the other partner to remain in the vehicle, and then it should only take a few minutes."

"What kind of reason?"

"Calling in to HQ to report that we had arrived on the scene, or to get additional instructions or equipment." J.C. shrugged, as though he couldn't come up with another reason.

"But at least one of you would take in some kind of medical equipment, just in case."

"That's how we operate."

Marco's brows knitted. "That puzzles me, J.C. I watched a surveillance video that shows Kyle going into the casino alone Tuesday evening, but he didn't take anything with him, not even a medical bag."

J.C.'s face turned so red, his freckles seemed ready to jump ship. He cast me a furious glance, obviously angry because I hadn't told him about the video. I picked up my cocoa and sipped it, avoiding his angry stare.

"What are you trying to prove?" J.C. asked Marco.

"I'm just trying to understand why Kyle went into the casino without equipment for an emergency call," Marco said.

"Sometimes when a person calls nine-one-one, he or she isn't certain whether there's a real emergency situation. So in that case one of us might go inside to check it out first."

"You're sure about that?" Marco asked.

He shifted positions. "I said we might do that."

Marco looked doubtful. "So if I called nine-one-one right now and reported that someone in this coffee shop might be having a heart attack, one of the responding paramedics would come inside without any medical bag or equipment to check it out first?"

J.C. chewed on the inside of his cheek. "As I said, he might."

"And if I posed the same question to the responding EMT, he'd give me the answer you gave me?"

The nervous paramedic shrugged.

Marco pulled out his phone. "Let's test it and see."

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

Marco punched in 9-1-1, put the phone to his ear, then said, "I think someone at the Daily Grind coffee shop might be having a heart attack. That's right. At Lincoln and Morgan."

J.C. tried to grab his phone, but Marco snapped it shut and slid it into his pocket.

"Listen, man," J.C. said, clearly agitated, "you'd better call again and say it was a false alarm. They'll send responders if you don't."

Marco took out the phone and opened it, but stopped short of making the call. "What was the real reason you and Kyle stopped at the casino that night?"

"Are you kidding me?" J.C. said angrily. "You're gonna let them come out here for nothing? You'll be arrested!"

"Answer the question and I'll call it off," Marco said.

J.C. slouched back in his chair with an exasperated sigh. "I don't believe this. What if a real emergency comes in and they're on their way here?"

"Then you'd better answer fast," Marco said.

"Kyle stopped at the boat to make a payment, okay? He owes the casino money. The emergency call was Kyle's cover story. He asked me to use it in case anyone questioned me about the stop. So that's what I did."

"How much money?" Marco asked.

"Look, I'm only telling you what Kyle told me," J.C. said, sweat beading on his upper lip. "I didn't question him. It was none of my business. Now would you make the call?"

"You and Kyle are friends, yet you didn't talk about him being in debt?" I asked.

"We work together. We're not friends. All I know is that he had to stop there to make a payment. I don't gamble. What do I know?"

Marco closed the phone. "Calm down. I didn't make that call. No one is coming."

The EMT's face turned red. "Why did you do that to me, man? I came here to help you."

"Lying doesn't count as help," Marco said.

"Look, I'm sorry! I didn't think Kyle would want it to get around that he owed money."

It was Marco's turn to slouch back with an exasperated sigh. "You're still lying."

J.C. threw his hands in the air. "You know what? I don't need this c.r.a.p. You want me to take a lie detector test? Because I will if you want me to."

"Did you tell Kyle you were meeting with us?" Marco said.

"Yeah, I told him. Why shouldn't I? It was something to talk about while we were on duty."

"Did he seem upset about the meeting?" I asked.

"No, just annoyed," J.C. said, rubbing his eyes.

"Why was he annoyed?" I asked.

"I'm not his shrink," J.C. said tersely. "Kyle seemed annoyed. I didn't ask him if he was annoyed. I listen to only about half of what Kyle says anyway because so much of it is pure bull. To hear him tell it, he picks up a different girl at the bar every night."

That certainly wasn't the nerdy guy I knew. "Does Kyle date?"

"He says he does, but I've never seen him with a woman."

"Now that everything is out on the table," Marco said, "let's go back to last Tuesday night. You finished your shift at midnight. Then what?"

"We parked the vehicle in the lot behind the hospital. Kyle and I logged out. Then we got into our cars and went home."

"Are you certain Kyle went home?" I asked.

J.C. gave us a look of disbelief. "I don't know what he did. Am I reading this right that you think Kyle might have murdered that woman?"

"At this stage in our investigation, we can't draw any conclusions," Marco said. "We're merely trying to rule Kyle out as a suspect. So anything you can tell us about his movements Tuesday night, Wednesday morning, and Friday night will help accomplish that."

J.C. kept shaking his head, as though he didn't know what to say. "Why didn't you tell me that at the outset?"

"You might have felt the need to protect your partner," Marco said.

"Look," J.C. said, "we're not friends. Kyle doesn't let anyone get close. So you want to know about Wednesday morning? Kyle showed up for work on time and we had a normal workday. Friday night? My girlfriend and I went to a movie. I don't know what Kyle did."

"Did he say anything about the murder?"

J.C. rubbed his palm over his short hair as he thought about it. "Every time we heard a news report about the murder, Kyle would say he couldn't understand why the vampire hadn't been arrested. 'How much more evidence do the cops need?' he'd ask. And I'd always say, 'More than they've got.' "

"Did Kyle express a fear of vampires, or a fascination with them?" Marco asked.

"It never came up until the murder," J.C. said. "No, wait. That's wrong. Kyle started talking about the guy at the bar a couple of days before the woman was abducted, because the day after she made the news, he said something about it being the work of the vampire."

"In what context did he talk about the so-called vampire?" Marco asked.