4 Blood Pact (16 page)

Obsession. Vicki’s obsession with finding her mother’s body blocked the grief she should be feeling, blocked getting on with the rest of her life. Henry leaned back against the tree and wondered how long he was going to let it continue. He knew he could break through it, but at what cost. Could he do it without breaking her? Without losing her? Without leaving Detective-Sergeant Michael Celluci to pick up the pieces?

Suddenly he smiled, the moon-white crescent of his teeth flashing in the darkness.
You measure your life in centuries,
he chided himself.
Give her some time to work through this. It’s only been a couple of days.
Too much of the twentieth century’s preoccupation with getting through unpleasantness as quickly and as tidily as possible had rubbed off on his thinking. Granted, repressing emotions was unhealthy but . . .
two days hardly deserves to be called an obsession.
It was, he realized, the presence of Michael Celluci that had made it seem so much longer.
He can do no more for her than you can. Trust in her strength, her common sense, and the knowledge that as much as she is able, she loves you.

Both,
added a small voice.

Shut up,
he told it savagely.

Straightening, he stepped away from the tree, and froze, the hair rising on the back of his neck. A second later, the screaming started.

The sound echoed around the close-packed buildings, making it difficult for him to locate its source. After chasing down a number of false leads, he arrived at the small secluded parking lot just as the campus police screeched to a stop, their headlights illuminating a terrified teenage girl backing away from a rust-edged car and the body of an equally young man sprawled half out of it onto the pavement. The boy had obviously been dead when the car door was opened—only the dead fall with such boneless disregard for the landing.

Eyes narrowed against the intrusive glare, Henry slid into a patch of deep shadow. While it wouldn’t be unusual for a passerby to be drawn by the screams, anonymity when possible ensured a greater degree of survival for his kind. With less noise than the wind made brushing up against the limestone walls, he began to move away. The girl was safe and although he would have intervened had he been in time, he had no interest in the myriad ways that mortals killed mortals.

“Like the guy looked like he was dead! Like all rotten and dead! I am
not
hysterical! Like I’ve seen movies, you know!” The last word trailed off into a rising wail.

And a corpse gone missing.

Henry stopped and turned back. There was probably no connection. He moved silently forward, around the edge of a building, and almost choked. The scent of the death he’d touched at the funeral home lay so thick on the grass that he had to back away. Skirting the edges, and
that
was closer than he wanted to go, he traced it to a pothole shattered access road and lost it again.

At the sound of approaching sirens, he pulled the night around him once more and made his way back to the parking lot. He would watch and listen until the drama played itself out. The girl could very well be hysterical, terror painting a yet more terrifying face on murder. The police would surely think so. Henry didn’t.

 

If Henry comes up empty at the morgue, I’ll have him start riding the buses. A young Asian male sitting just in front of the back door eating candy shouldn’t be too hard to spot. Celluci can do the day shift.
Vicki circled the Brock Street transfer point on her bus map. It wasn’t much of a lead, but it was the only one they had and she knew it was one the police would have neither time nor manpower to follow. If Tom Chen—or whatever his name was—was still in Kingston, and till riding the buses, they’d find him eventually.

Eventually.
She sat back on the couch and rubbed her eyes under her glasses.
That is, if he’s still in Kingston, and
if
he’s still riding the buses.

And if he wasn’t?

What if he’d thrown her mother’s body into a car and driven away? He might not only have left the area but the country as well. The Ivy Lea Bridge over The Thousand Islands to the States wasn’t far and with the amount of traffic that crossed daily, the odds of his car being searched by Customs were negligible. He could be anywhere.

But he knew her mother. There was no other reason for him to pass over the other bodies that had come through the funeral home and then run off with hers. Specifically hers. So the odds were good he had his base in the area.

That took care of who and where. Or, at least, that assembled as much information as they had.

Vicki dug her fingers into the back of her neck, trying to ease the knots of tension that tied her shoulders into solid blocks, then bent over the coffee table again, ignoring the knowledge that she’d be more comfortable in the kitchen. Stacking her notes on Tom Chen neatly to one side, she spread the contents of Dr. Friedman’s file over the table.
Who
and
where
and
when
and even
how;
she had notes on all of these, a sheet of paper for each with the heading written in black marker at the top of the page. Only
why
remained blank. Why steal a body? Why steal her mother’s body?

The pencil snapped between her fingers and the sound drove Vicki back against the sofa cushions, heart pounding. Those questions weren’t part of the investigation. Those questions were for later, for
after
she’d got her mother back. Left hand pressed against the bridge of her glasses, Vicki fought for control. Her mother needed her to be strong.

All at once, the lingering smell of her mother’s perfume, cosmetics, and bath soap coated nose and throat with a patina of the past. Her right fist dug into her stomach, denying the sudden nausea. The ambient noise of the apartment moved to the foreground. The refrigerator motor gained the volume of a helicopter taking off and a dripping tap in the bathroom echoed against the porcelain. An occasional car sped by on the street outside and something moved in the gravel parking lot.

Gradually, the other sounds faded back into the distance, but the footsteps dragging across the loose stones continued. Vicki frowned, grateful for the distraction.

It could be Celluci returning from the fish and chip store across the street, his footsteps hesitant because . . . well, because both he and Henry had been hesitant around her since they’d arrived. It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate their help, because she did, but she wished they’d get it through their mutually thick heads that she could take care of herself.

Something brushed against the living room window.

Vicki straightened. The large ground level windows of the basement apartment had always been a tempting target for neighborhood kids and over the years had been decorated with soap, paint, eggs, lipstick, and, once, with Smurf stickers. Standing, she walked over and flicked on the floor lamp with its three, hundred watt bulbs. With luck, enough of the brilliant white light illuminating the living room would spill out into the night and she’d actually be able to see the little vandals before they ran.

She paused at the window, one hand holding the edge of the curtain, the other the cords of the venetian blind that ran behind. This close, she could hear that something was definitely rubbing against the other side of the glass. With one smooth, practiced motion, she threw the curtain aside and yanked the length of the blind up against its top support.

Pressed up against the glass, fingers splayed, mouth silently working, was her mother. Two pairs of eyes, an identical shade of gray, widened in simultaneous recognition.

Then the world slid sideways for a second.

Fragmented memory fought to become whole. Desperately, she grabbed at the pieces.

She couldn’t find it, couldn’t hold it.

A teenager, legs pumping, a ribbon breaking across her chest. A tall, young woman standing proudly in a blue uniform. A tiny pink mouth opening in what was surely the first yawn in creation. A child, suddenly grown serious, small arms reaching out to hold her while she cried. A voice saying, “Don’t worry, Mother.”

Mother.

She knew now what it was she had to do.

 

The window was empty. No one moved in the parking lot as far as the spill of light and Vicki’s vision went.

Around the comer, out of sight on the gravel path that lead to the entrance of the building, the same faltering footsteps sounded.

Vicki whirled and ran for the apartment door.

She’d turned the lock behind Celluci, a habit ingrained after years spent in a larger, more violent city. Now, as trembling fingers twisted the mechanism, the lock jammed.

“GODDAMNED FUCKING SON OF A BITCH!”

She couldn’t hear the footsteps any longer. Couldn’t hear anything but the blood roaring in her ears.

She’ll be on the step now . . .
The metal pushed bruises into her hands. . . .
opening the outer door
. . . Had the security door been locked when Celluci left? Vicki couldn’t remember.
If she can’t get in, she’ll go away.
The whole door shuddered as she slammed the lock with her fists.
Don’t go away!
Through fingers white with strain, she felt something give.

The hall was empty.

The security door open.

Over the scream of denial that slammed echoes up against the sides of her skull though no sound passed teeth ground tight together, Vicki heard a car door slam. Then tires retreating across gravel.

Adrenaline catapulted her up the half flight of stairs and flung her out into the night.

 

“That was close, Cathy, too close. She was inside the building!”

“Is she all right?”

“What do you mean, is she all right? Don’t you mean, did anyone see you?

“No.” Catherine shook her head, the flying ends of hair gleaming ivory under the passing street lights. “The repairs we did aren’t designed for so much activity. If any of those motors have burned out . . .”

Donald finished strapping the weakly struggling body in and made his way to the front of the van. “Well, everything seems to be working,” he sighed, settling into his seat. “But it sure didn’t want to come with me.”

“Of course not, you interrupted the pattern.”

“What pattern?”

“The body was responding to leaving the Life Sciences building by retracing a path followed for years.”

“Yeah? I thought it was going home.”

“Her home is with us now.”

Donald shot an anxious glance over his shoulder into the back of the van. Number nine lay passively by, but number ten continued to push against the restraints. It had followed on his command, but he’d be willing to bet his chances for a Nobel Prize that it hadn’t wanted to.

“Lie still,” he snapped, and was only mildly relieved when it followed the programming.

Mike Celluci stepped out of the tiny fish and chip shop, inhaling the smell of french fries and greasy halibut overlaid on a warm spring night. Just at that particular moment, things didn’t look so bad. While finding Marjory Nelson’s body as soon as possible would be best for all concerned, Vicki was an intelligent adult, well acquainted with the harsh reality that some cases never got solved. Eventually, she’d accept that her mother was gone, accept that her mother was dead, and they could return to solving the problem all of this had interrupted.