Blood Debt (31 page)

“Dr. Mui had both opportunity and motive,” Celluci pointed out. “Ronald Swanson dropped the opportunity in her lap, and she got greedy.”

“Thin,” Vicki muttered, “very thin. You were being kept in one of Swanson's guest houses, remember?”

“That doesn't mean he knew why I was there. She could have told him anything.”

“Most importantly,” Henry finished, “nothing that happened last night has had any effect on the ghosts. Not Sullivan's death, not Swanson's heart attack.”

Dr. Mui had taken Celluci's blood. Vicki was willing to condemn her on that alone. Nodding, as though she'd just been convinced, she sat back and said dryly, “So all evidence suggests the doctor's not just the hired gun, she's an opportunistic, murdering, hypocritical, amoral bitch. And if I can't kill her, what are we supposed to do about her? Call the police from a pay phone with an anonymous tip.” She lowered her voice dramatically, “You don't know me, but you should check into Dr. Mui's finances. Make her explain where the money comes from.”

“She'll probably have an explanation. That woman's got ba . . .” Celluci paused as Vicki pinned him with a silver gaze. “. . . ovaries of steel. She's got an answer for everything.”

“Well, she's also got a small fortune tucked away in secure countries, and my guess is she's going to run. If she hasn't already.”

“I don't think so.” Head cocked, Henry stared across a patch of thin grass delineating the boundaries between his building and Dr. Mui's. “A cable van just pulled up next door, and I believe that's Patricia Chou getting out.”

“How the hell can you see who it is from up here?” Celluci scoffed. Then he remembered. Henry, like Vicki, had very good night sight. “Never mind. Stupid question. If it's Patricia Chou, then the police probably chased her away from Swanson's sickbed. She's probably been hovering over him like a vulture all day.”

Vicki stared at Celluci in exaggerated surprise. “I thought she was a friend of yours.”

“Ignoring for the moment that I've only met the woman once, since when have I ignored the faults of my friends?”

Vicki made a mental note of the pointed emphasis. He'd pay for it after he healed. “So if Ms. Chou is there, then Dr. Mui is there—so, as I said, what now?”

Henry turned from the windows, his eyes dark. “We use Ms. Chou to make certain the doctor is in her apartment tomorrow at sunset and we let the only witnesses we have confront the accused. Isn't that what the law would require, Detective?”

Celluci felt himself caught by darkness and jerked free; it had been too easy over the last few days to forget the law. “No, actually, it's the other way around. The accused have the right to confront their accuser.”

“All right.” Henry nodded. “That, too.”

“Look, Fitzroy, you can't just . . .”

“Why not? Is there a law against allowing the dead a voice?”

“You know damned well there isn't. It's just . . .”

“You can't confront her with the ghosts, Henry.” Vicki cut him off, her tone suggesting this would be the final word. “If the radius of their . . . uh, effect was big enough, they'd have confronted her already. You'd have to get closer, and you can't.”

“Yes, I can.”

“They appear at sunset. That means you'd have to get closer at
sunrise
.”

“I know.”

This would be my territory, then.
She did more than suppress the thought, she obliterated it. “Forget it. It'd be too dangerous.”

“And what of the danger of never getting rid of these ghosts, of having to ask the right question evening after evening, knowing that if I make a mistake, innocents will die?”

“Then we bring her to the ghosts.”

“And how do we . . .” He'd been about to say “get rid of her body afterward” when a glance at Celluci's face changed his mind. “. . . bring in the police?” When Vicki couldn't answer, he said, “My plan will put Patricia Chou on the spot and so far she's certainly been . . .” A number of descriptions were considered and discarded. “. . . effective.”

Celluci grunted in agreement. Using the ghosts to spook the doctor into the arms of the media, using the media once again to inform the police—that he could deal with.

“It also puts you on the spot, Henry. How do you plan on surviving this plan of yours?”

Her concern was genuine; she might have been speaking of any friend, any mortal friend. As a measure of how far they'd come in so short a time, it was nothing short of miraculous.

“Don't get all choked up on me, Henry. Answer the fucking question.”

He shook his head, a little bemused by the speed of the evolution. “I'll, uh, be spending the day with the doctor's neighbors, Carole and Ron Pettit.

“Friends of yours?”

“Not yet.” Ignoring Celluci's interrogative glower, he picked up the phone and tapped in the number he'd noted during his earlier visit.

As Henry seemed unwilling to explain, Celluci leaned over and muttered, “What's he doing?” into Vicki's ear.

“Do you remember the way Dracula got Lucy to leave the house?”

“He stood outside in the garden and called?”

“Well, that's what Henry's doing.”

“Dracula didn't use a phone.”

“Times change.”

“Hello, Carole. Carole, I need you to do something for me. I need you to unlock your door, Carole. That's right, Carole, you know who I am.”

The room seemed suddenly very warm. Celluci tugged at his jeans. When Vicki leaned over and flicked an earlobe with her tongue, he jerked away from the invitation. “Don't,” he said hoarsely. “Not here, not now.”

“Unlock your door, Carole, and be ready for company. It doesn't matter that you're not alone. That's right, Carole, unlock your door. I'll be there in a moment, Carole. Wait for me.”

“That's it?” Celluci demanded as Henry returned the receiver to the cradle.

Henry shrugged, remembering the gargoyle. “Some people need less calling than others.”

Wishing he'd worn looser pants, Celluci snarled something noncommittal and set about convincing himself there'd been no response.

They walked Henry down to the lobby and watched him cross to the other building.

“I take it he's going to suggest Carole and company leave the condo?”

“If it were me, I'd suggest they leave by sunrise and not come back for about twenty-four hours.”

“It's a long time until sunrise, Vicki. What's he going to do in the meantime?”

She turned and stared at him.

His ears reddened. “Never mind. You'd better speak with Ms. Chou by yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because you can make her forget the conversation, forget about you. I can't.”

“Well, thank you so much for letting me have my case back.” Patting him lightly on the cheek, she started toward the cable van. She had every intention of doing exactly what Celluci had suggested.
She'll forget about the conversation. And she'll forget about
you.

“Just make sure that she's in her condo at sunset.”

Even lost in the silvered depths of Vicki's eyes, Patricia Chou had the will to protest. “And how am I supposed to do that?”

“From what I've heard, most of the city would stay home rather than face you.”

“Well, she never goes in to the clinic on Fridays . . .”

“How do you know that?”

“I know almost everything and intend to find out the rest. It's why most of the city hates me.” She smiled.

Vicki'd seen that smile before—had seen it three nights ago, reflected in the eyes of Bynowski and Haiden just before they died. Patricia Chou enjoyed her work.
And Henry was worried about sharing a territory with
me.

Henry sped down the hall and past the woman standing in her doorway, obviously waiting for him.

Once safe inside, he caught his breath and softly called her name.

She turned. Past forty and not fighting it, she'd tried to match herself to her pseudo-Gothic decor but was far too sun-kissed and healthy-looking to succeed.

“Come inside, Carole, and close the door.”

The Hunger rose in response to the hunger on her face.

Eventually, she'll get bored and go away. Or some new scandal will arise in some other part of the city and she'll go away.
Dr. Mui stood in her solarium and scowled down at the top of the cable van just visible in the parking lot below, the yellow rectangle standing out with irritating clarity against the gray pavement.
Or someone will drop a heavy object on her head and she'll GO AWAY.

Patricia Chou had drastically altered her plans for the day.

By late morning she'd done everything she could from her computer in the condo. Although her phone lines were as secure as her hacker-for-hire could make them, she'd known there was no such thing as a completely secure line—the computers at the Eastside Clinic and the drop-in center were theoretically secure, but that same hacker had accessed them both with apparent ease. In order for her to leave the country, wealth intact, and leave no trail, there were a number of matters that required a personal touch.

She should have been able to accomplish everything necessary in a couple of hours, but from the moment she'd left the parking lot, the reflection of the cable van had filled her rearview mirror. The reporter herself had followed, as it were, off road—never breaking any laws, never making too big a nuisance of herself, never going away.

Only two of the three errands had been done. The third, she had no intention of fulfilling in front of a witness and had returned home, Patricia Chou still on her heels.

Her station won't let her sit there forever. When she's called in, I'll make my move. Almost everything has been prepared, and there's no reason to panic. You are in no danger of discovery if you remain calm.
Her nails scraped against the glass as her fingers curled into fists. She could just barely make out one slender, denim-clad leg thrust out of the van's interior.
Oh, for a truck to go by and take that off at the knee
. . . .

All afternoon she'd watched as Patricia Chou had traded on local recognition and interviewed almost everyone coming or going from the building.

It had been a very long afternoon.

“Patricia, please,” Brent pleaded, digging his knuckles into bloodshot eyes. “Let's go. We're not going to get anything else today, and I'm wiped.”

“Just a little while longer.”

The cameraman sighed, collapsed back against a bag of equipment. “You've been saying that for the last hour.”

“This time I mean it.” She twisted out the door until she could see the red and gold streaking the bottom of the clouds. “Just wait until sunset.”

“Why? What's going to happen at sunset?”

Between one heartbeat and the next, a silver shadow flickered in her eyes. “I have no idea . . .”

“Then why . . .?”

“. . . but I've been promised a story.”

7:43. Celluci looked up from his watch and squinted out the window. The setting sun had turned the other building a brilliant white-gold. Whatever was going to happen, wasn't going to happen for another five minutes. He still had time to stop it.

His right thumb rubbed the scabbed puncture in the hollow of his left elbow.

Four minutes.

Still time.

Three minutes.

It wasn't because she was responsible for, at the very least, the deaths of the two young men whose spirits haunted Henry. It wasn't because of what she'd done to him personally.

She'd used their hope when hope was all those people had.

Two minutes.

The law could deal with murder, but if Henry's ghosts didn't have the right to deal with the death of hope, who did?

He saw the flaw in the plan at 7:47. By then, it was too late.

Henry'd spent the day wrapped in a theatrical blackout curtain, lying on the floor of the walk-in closet. Although wide open to suggestion, the Pettits had not been easy to get rid of. Having found him, they wanted to stay with him. He'd barely had time to gain his sanctuary and twist the door handle into an unusable chunk of metal when sunrise claimed him.

7:48. Sunset.

They were there. He could feel their presence more strongly than he'd ever felt it before. The air around him was uniformly cold, and when he drew in his first breath, it seemed to move reluctantly into his lungs, coating the inside of his mouth and throat with a frigid film.

Wormwood and gall
. He swallowed reluctantly.

His hand rested on the switch of small desk lamp he'd brought into the closet with him. Too bright an illumination would be of no more use than the darkness; the overhead light would blind him and wash the spirits out to near invisibility.

When he turned the switch, he could see the two ghosts who'd haunted him from the beginning pressed up tight against his feet. All around them—all around him—were others. He couldn't count their numbers, they kept shifting in and out of focus—here a young woman with the corner of her upper lip pierced, there tormented eyes peering out from under a fringe of hair. Faces. Bodies. The invisible chorus made manifest.

Fear.

It rose off them like smoke, filling the space too thickly for even Henry to endure.

Dr. Mui turned from the window and peered into the shadows of her apartment. One hand rose, an involuntary warding against the sudden feeling she wasn't alone.

“I should turn on a light.”

Her voice traveled no farther than the edge of her mouth, unable to make an impression on the silence.

One step back. Two.

Her shoulders pressed against the glass.

Henry found himself pressed back into the corner without remembering how he'd gotten there. The closet had filled with the amorphous shapes of the dead, only the original two maintaining form. And they seemed to be waiting.