Blood Hunt (27 page)

“
Just after the Pizza Hut.”

Farther than he wanted to walk in daylight.

“
When you come back, park behind the hotel at the Methodist Church. The parking places out front will be filling with people coming to the five-thirty showing at the theater.”

Mrs. Haas’ house had a wheelchair ramp up to the porch. And fire at the door as usual. When he rang the bell, the woman answering startled him. Anna Bieber!

No, he realized a moment later. This woman’s hair had been shorn boy short and she used a walker. But the face and clear eyes were Anna’s, and they searched his face intently. “You’re Garreth? I’m Mary Catherine. Please come in.”

She led him to a livingroom furnished with the same kind of deep-cushioned chairs and couch Anna’s house had.

“
Thank you for coming,” she said as they sat down. “Violet will have told you I’m Sharon’s grandmother, so first I have to thank you for her life. The Lord is mysterious and wonderful, bringing her cousin here from so far away in time to save her.”

Garreth started. “Excuse me? Cousin?”

“
Yes. You see, I’m also Anna Bieber’s twin sister...”

That explained the likeness!

“
...and I really asked to see you because I think my niece Mada is the grandmother you’ve been looking for.”

That caught him by surprise, too. “You do? Why?”

She sighed. “History repeating itself. Although we were more practical when Anna got pregnant. We got her a shotgun wedding to Ben Bieber. Even at fifteen and eager to drop our drawers for our Irish stallion every chance we got — Danny Shannon, a hired hand at our farm...” She smiled at the memory. “...we knew he wasn’t husband material.”

Garreth jacked his jaw back in place. His mind boggled at these two sweet elderly ladies as hormonal teenagers humping the hired hand then scheming to arrange marriage. “You made Ben think the baby was his?”

She shook her head. “He knew what he was getting. He and Anna had been wanting to marry, so she told Ben that Danny caught her in the barn one night, thinking she was me, and it being dark, she gave herself thinking, until too late, he was Ben, come for more than cuddling that time, and now she was in the family way. She knew Ben would insist on making an honest woman of her and he agreed with her suggestion they sleep together at least once so they could truthfully confess to fornication.” She smiled again. “Anna told me Ben marked his territory good and proper by rising to the occasion three or four times before morning.”

More information than Garreth needed. “So you think Mada got pregnant, too.”

She nodded. “In California, not Europe, and since the professor couldn’t marry her, she ended up at your grandmother’s boarding house using that false name.”

“
What about the visitor calling herself Maggie Bieber?”

“
I wasn’t here — my husband was in the Army and stationed at Fort Leavenworth for the early thirties — but I’m thinking ‘Maggie’ was Ben’s sister Adele. She always accused Anna of tricking Ben into marriage, and was outraged at Ben scraping together that tuition money in such hard times for another man’s bastard. Danny was long gone when Mada was born — we made sure he skedaddled before Anna went to Ben, for fear Ben would kill him — but everyone remembered him and that red hair marked her as his. Ben sent Mada to college to let her get away where no one knew or cared about her paternity. He hoped college worked better than sending her into town for high school did.”

With that family history and what the librarian said about Lane’s behavior and treatment in high school, no wonder she embraced being a vampire. It gave her the power to take revenge on the world.

He pulled his attention back to Mary Catherine. “How would Adele have known where Mada was?”

“
She’d been widowed and was living with Ben. Except for several years after running away with the professor, Mada always keeps in touch with Anna...letters, phone calls. I think she did write in that time...from your grandmother’s about her situation...but Anna never got the letter because Adele intercepted it and got so mad she decided to go tell Mada just what she thought of her. Giving her name as Maggie Bieber let Mada know someone knew who she really was.”

The plausibility of the story and its smooth dove-tailing with his cover story left Garreth suddenly feeling as if he were wading and lost contact with the bottom...that reality was blurring, and with it his ability to distinguish between the true Mikaelian and role he played here.

Mary Catherine gave an emphatic nod. “I believe when Mada abandoned your father, she went on to Europe like she and the professor originally planned, and that’s why Anna believes she was there the whole time. Even though I’m sure Adele spitefully tried to convince Anna otherwise. Ask Mada about it if you’re here at Thanksgiving or Christmas. I don’t see how it would embarrass her now. Nothing does as far as I can tell. She tells the most scandalous stories about herself.”

No...the
least
scandalous stories, nothing touching the truth about her...Lane the vampire, the killer.

He gave Mary Catherine sincere thanks as he left. “You’ve answered important questions for me. I will stick around and see Mada.”

But he needed to arrange a logical way to do so.

Taking a back way to the hotel, he considered the most obvious option. Signing on to the local PD fit the
I Ching
advice Lien gave him when he left San Francisco, that acting to re-create order must be done with proper authority. His conscience stung at trying for a job that deserved a commitment he knew impossible to honor, but if Grandma Doyle were right about his continued existence being only to bring Lane to justice, they would never learn he joined knowing it would be temporary. Not that Nat’s desire to recruit him made acceptance a slam dunk. He doubted Nat had hiring authority and who knew how whoever did might feel about it.

7

Whatever the attitude of those doing the hiring might be when the subject came up, Nat had clearly created some interest here in the PD office. When Garreth walked up to the glass of the front desk a bit before eight, a plump young woman swivelled from a long communications desk that divided the receiving area from one with desks and file cabinets and gave him a bright smile.

“
You must be Garreth Mikaelian.” She hurried over to eye him with interest through the glass, from head to the sport coat he put on for the evening, to jeans and boots, then opened a door at the end of the desk to let him in. “I’m Sue Ann Pfeifer, the evening dispatcher.”

A real Pfeifer. Who smelled of blood and...chocolate?

“
Would you like a chocolate chip cookie? I brought a fresh batch this evening.” She pointed to a plate of cookies sitting between the radio and teletype on the communications desk.

The smell brought a vivid memory of his mother baking. He remembered the taste...so sweet then, nauseating to think of now. “No thank you. I’m not a cookie eater.”

She sighed and patted a generous hip. “I shouldn’t be either. Tomorrow — ”

“
...You’re going to go on a diet.” Nat appeared out of a hallway at the back of the room, buckling on his gear belt. “I’m glad you decided to come. Maggie Lebekov here is just getting ready to go off duty, so come and meet her.”

He stopped beside a desk where an attractive, trim brunette in her twenties sat typing a report.

“
Maggie is our Afternoon officer, our expert with juveniles and domestic disputes. Maggie, this is Garreth Mikelian.”

Garreth came around the communications desk, holding out his hand. “Glad to meet you.”

She glanced up no farther than his hand, and returned to typing. “Nat, I forgot to mention Scott Dreiling has the keys to his Trans Am again. I guess Mama couldn’t stand her baby not being able to drive himself to school and football practice.”

Garreth examined his fingers for frostbite. Terrific. They had Up-Against-the-Car Duncan and Ice Queen Lebekov. So much for being a friendly department. Did he really want to work here?

Nat’s ears reddened. “Let me show you the rest of the station.”

That consisted, downstairs here, of the complaint, communication, and officer desk areas, a locker room for personnel that doubled as an interview room, and across the hallway from it, a look through a glass panel into Chief Kenneth Danzig’s office, which also held the evidence lockers. All of which could fit into Homicide’s office with room to spare. Upstairs they had three cells — male, female, and juvenile — and a drunk tank. Empty at the moment.

“
These are basically holding cells.,” Nat said. “Anyone with real jail time goes to the county lockup in Bellamy.” He sighed. “I apologize for the reception you got from Maggie. It’s my fault. I was telling her all about you and Wayne, making it pretty clear I hoped I could talk you into applying here. If you come on, you’ll get the shift I have now, which she’s been wanting.”

A perfect shift for a vampire, but... “She would have seniority, though, so — ”

Nat cut him off with a head shake. “Nope. Danzig’s okay with female officers but he won’t let one patrol alone at night.”

Lebekov was gone from the officer area when they came downstairs again. Nat picked a portable radio out of a rack by the hallway. “Okay, Sue Anne, we’re going 10-8.”

She beamed at them. “Let’s be careful out there.”

He saluted and led the way down the hall out the rear entrance to the parking lot. After running through a check of the patrol car’s lights, siren, and shotgun, Nat steered out of the parking lot and east on Oak.

“
Sorry you didn’t get to meet more of us tonight.” He peered in his outside mirror at a battered pickup which passed them going the other direction. “Briefly, Danzig’s been chief for three years. Came from the Wichita PD. He’s...pragmatic...prefers keeping the peace to law enforcement, following the spirit of the law more than the letter of it. He listens to complaints and ideas we have, cares that we have decent equipment and continued training...because good equipment keeps us safer, he says, and pride in it makes us better cops. But you need to always be straight with him. Don’t step out of line or he’ll land hard on you, and your arrests and evidence better not get thrown out of court for irregularities.

“
Lieutenant Byron Kaufman is a twenty year man who definitely prefers peace keeping. I doubt he’s ever drawn his weapon except to qualify at the range. Never had to. If talk won’t work on an offender, he’s a ninja with a baton. He knows this town and the people inside out, and remembers every detail of every case since he joined. Bill Pfannenstiel, our other officer, is almost a carbon copy. They’re both a little old fashioned about women in police work.”

“
Do they give Lebekov static?”

“
Not as such, but they tend to be condescending...sure she’s just playing cops and robbers until Mr. Right comes along. She wants to prove she isn’t and is as good as any male officer. Danzig hired her not long after he came. She was a dispatcher before, on Sue Ann’s shift, wanting to be an officer...but Sewing, the old chief, didn’t believe in women cops. Neither did the mayor and council until Danzig argued we needed a female for handling juveniles, domestic situations, and rape victims.”

So they presumably had to approve him, too.

“
She’s homegrown like Kaufman, Pfannenstiel, and me. Duncan’s semi-homegrown, from Russell. Came here after a hitch in the Marines to share a house with his sister and her two kids.”

“
He’s not a peace keeper type.”

Nat shook his head. “But a big stick can be useful.” They turned on to Kansas Avenue. “Welcome to the teen cruise and, along with tomorrow night, our heaviest traffic of the week.”

It was, Garreth reflected, a matter of perspective and proportion. Hardly heavy traffic by Market Street or Embarcadero standards, but still...a stream of cars, pickups, and vans looping south to the Pizza Hunt and across the tracks north to the Sonic Drive-In and back across the tracks south again. The vehicles frequently pulling up alongside each other for the occupants to call across the space between. Considering Baumen’s size, the number impressed Garreth.

“
Do you really have this many teenagers?” Every one with a vehicle and a driver’s license must be here.

“
They come in from the farms and down from Lebeau, too. There isn’t much else to do Friday and Saturday night other than the movies, and football this time of year. And tonight the football team isn’t playing.” Ahead of them a girl leaned out a passenger window toward the car next to them. Nat burped the siren. “Stay in the car!”

She made a face but pulled back inside.

“
Do you write them up for things like that?”

Nat shook his head. “Duncan sometimes does. I tend to cut them slack. I’ve — ”

“
Been there?” Garreth said.

Nat grinned, then frowned. “Now he...” he said, pointing at a black Trans Am dodging between lanes on the other side of the tracks, “...is something else. Scott Dreiling, perennial offender...or at least perennially offensive.” He whipped the car over the tracks at the next crossing and worked his way toward the Trans Am. “Daddy’s on the city council, which Scott thinks entitles him to diplomatic immunity.” He pulled alongside the Trans Am and shouted across Garreth toward the blond boy at the wheel. “Scott, try driving like you want to keep those car keys. Officer Duncan is on duty tonight, too.”