Deadworld (11 page)

Chapter 17

The afternoon skies bore down on Nick like a gloomy gray stone. A steady, windswept drizzle coated the city in a glossy sheen. Not that bright blue skies would have made the task any easier. Drake had been frustratingly hard to pinpoint. The tingling sense of awareness of the other side would pop up but then fade a few minutes later. It was something Nick could not understand. The feeling should have been more constant, even if Cornelius was driving around. The fleetingness of it made no sense, and Nick found himself growing more irritated as the day wore on. They were being played with, and there was little they could do except keep playing the game.

Drake would be taking his next victim soon. After the first it had been days between victims, but now, knowing full well how quickly law enforcement could work, Nick figured he would be lucky if it was more than a day or two. Drake would want him to get a good whiff, too—offer up a little extra inspiration and maybe do something to link him even more closely to the murders. Jackie Rutledge would be all over him then. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get arrested—but then, that would ruin the game. Cornelius would not want that, so he was counting on Nick’s ability to avoid incarceration. Nick had entertained the thought of turning himself in just to break things up, to see what Drake would do, but who was to say he would not just march right into the jail and slaughter everyone, including himself for not playing by the rules. If anything, the man had proven he did not like his life to be interfered with.

He found himself thinking more about what might happen to Jackie Rutledge if she got too close to things. Technology made it so difficult now to circumvent investigations. The odds were growing stronger by the hour that he would be brought in on suspicion. If they found reason to get a warrant to search his house, shit would really hit the fan. The woman was close to the point of pulling him in just for breathing funny.

Nick crept along, barely holding the speed limit while he let his mind wander, catching the occasional whiff of a ghost, potent enough to still be lingering in the world of the living, but missing that peculiar, bittersweet stench of the other side. Shelby was right, of course. The FBI could make this search easier. Whatever Drake had up his sleeve, it was confounding their senses. They were no closer to him now than earlier. Of course, a little blood would go a long way toward evening the odds. No matter how much the thought lingered though, Nick could not bring himself to call Drake’s bluff on that account. Promises had been made, ones that would damn him to hell regardless if he broke them.

Then Nick caught the familiar whoosh of the door to Deadworld opening up, a faint but persistent echo in his mind, like the caw of a crow stuck in an endless loop. Drake was feeding again, and it had not even been twenty-four hours.

Turning north up Western Avenue, Nick gunned his engine and began to weave through traffic, ignoring the blaring horns. It was up near the area Shelby had been searching in. The soft, singsong lilt of her voice spoke into his ear.

“Hi! Shel here, and, no, I’m not. Just leave me a—” Nick grumbled and clicked the cell shut. What the hell was she doing?

Five minutes later, he tried her again with similar results. “Damnit, Shel! Where are you?” A thousand hopeless, gut-clenching scenarios tumbled through his head while he began to zero in on the source. He was close, a few blocks, perhaps. Then, mysteriously, the feeling faded away to the usual dim whisper.

This time, her voice rang loud and clear. “Hey, babe.”

“Where in Christ’s name were you? I had him for a minute. I’m on Western, heading north.”

“I was ignoring all the calls to flash my boobs,” she said, laughing loudly.

Funny. He was years removed from feeling any jealousy over her. “You could take this just a little more seriously.”

“Oh, fucking lighten up, Nick. We’re closing in. He’s close.”

She was evading. Being a sheriff and a PI did give you certain advantages at times. What would she need to be evasive for? “You weren’t actually flashing your breasts at anyone, were you?”

“Aw, could my Nick be—” She cut off for a moment, her voice replaced by the screaming roar of her motorcycle’s engine and the screeching of tires. “Out of the way, dipshit!”

Nick pulled to a stop in front of a Starbucks. Coffee sounded good now, and he could use a break. “Where are you going in such a hurry? You’re going to kill yourself, powers or not.”

She laughed again, the sound almost giddy. “Just cruising, sweetie. Clearing my head. Besides, I need to lose this tail again. These feds suck.”

The tail had been a constant since noon. It did not take much to lose them, but it wasn’t long before they picked either of them up again. It hit Nick abruptly then, like a punch in the gut. Sweetie. She had not called him that in thirty years.

Anger and fear swept through him like wildfire. “Damnit, Shel. Tell me you didn’t just drink. Tell me that feeling I just had five minutes ago was Drake and not you drinking from someone.” There was no answer, just the changing of gears on her bike. “Shelby! Answer me, goddamn you!”

The BMW screeched to a halt in his ear, and the roar of the engine quieted to a dull rumble. The sarcasm stung Nick like a wasp. “Drink what, Nick?”

Nick slapped a hand over his face in disbelief. “You did. Sweet mother of God, you drank blood.”

Shelby was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was more subdued. “I didn’t kill anyone, Nick.”

“Like that makes a fuck—” He stopped himself, taking a deep breath. The anger would do no good. Shelby would enjoy the fight, more than likely. “That doesn’t make a difference, and you know it.”

An exasperated sigh whispered in his ear. “So what, Nick? You realize the position we’re in now, don’t you? One down, four to go, and then it’s you, babe. We’re no closer than we’ve ever been.”

True, but still wrong. “You promised me, Shel. No more blood.”
We swore upon the graves of our loved ones. Swore never again to be so corrupt and evil.

“Yeah, I did. It was thirty fucking years ago, when it didn’t really matter.” Her voice grew steadily louder in his ear. “But it matters now, and we need all the goddamn help we can get. Besides, he deserved it, Nick. Don’t worry, he’ll live. We won’t if we don’t do something.”

“There are other things—”

“What things!” she yelled in his ear, years of frustration and rage bursting out of her so loudly it made his ear ring. “We aren’t doing anything, and you are shuffling your weary ass up to the firing line just so you can feel better about getting shot. Well, fuck that! Fuck that, Nick. I’m not doing it. My senses are pumping now, and, oh, does it feel good. So I’m going to hunt a while, babe. Okay? You’re lucky I don’t give Agent Rutledge a call and have her join me. Later.”

The phone went silent, and Nick hurled it against the opposite door. She was right and wrong at the same time. Moral ambiguity was such a pain in the ass. Nick forgot his coffee and gunned his car back into traffic. Somehow she had gotten over the ethical hump and broken her promise. It didn’t mean as much to her. How could it? Nick swore. He could almost hear the blood that had been singing in Shelby’s veins, pushing open the door and letting the delightfully abhorrent rush come pouring through. Damn her.

The thought of blood would not leave his mind. It would be so easy to give in, but it would make him once again into that same monster Drake was.

On the passenger-side floor, his cell rang, interrupting the troubling thoughts. Nick was forced to pull into the parking lot of the Riverview Plaza so he could stop and pick up the phone. The number didn’t indicate who was calling.

“Anderson.”

“Agent Rutledge, Mr. Anderson. Am I bothering you?” Her tone was decidedly calm.

“Just running some errands, Agent Rutledge. How can I help you?”

“Everything okay there, Mr. Anderson? You sound a little annoyed.”

Nick took a deep breath. She picked up cues well. “Frustrating day is all.”

“I hear you there,” she said, sounding a little too pleased. “I had something come up today I was wanting to ask you about.”

Nick put the car into park and sagged back into his seat. “Ask away.”

“That penny we showed you before—you remember the one?”

“Of course.”

“Well, it was stolen this morning from our evidence room.”

“That’s unfortunate,” he said. “And, no, I’m not sure how or why that would have happened. If that’s what you were wondering.”

“Oh, no,” she replied, not taking the bait. “We have some strong leads on that account. I wanted to ask you though if you had thought of anything relevant in this matter, you know, that might help us pinpoint our culprit. We have some suspicions, but it would help us out if you might offer some information that would narrow it down for us.”

Where was she heading with this? Could they really know already? No, he assured himself. He would be handcuffed in an interrogation room right now if that was the case. She was fishing. “I was perfectly honest with you before, Agent Rutledge. I have no additional information for you in that regard.”

“Hmmm, okay,” came her simple reply. “I wanted to double-check before we head out to look into these leads. Thank you for your time.”

“Anytime. Feel free to call again if you have any further questions.”

This time her reply had a tinge of anger. “Oh, we will. Don’t worry.”

Nick clicked off his phone and put it back in his pocket. At least he knew they didn’t have him on that yet. They were trying, however, and it was only a matter of time. One thing was certain. Their presence was not going away any time soon. He put the car into gear and pulled back out onto the street. A block behind, he caught sight of the brown sedan as it pulled out of a gas station and began to follow.

Chapter 18

The door to Jackie’s apartment swung open, and Laurel stepped in, plastic shopping bags dangling from her hands.

Jackie looked away from the oversize corkboard mounted on her living room wall where all the pictures Hauser had found were tacked up with multicolored push-pins. “What’s that? You cooking us dinner?”

“It’s stuff for your pathetic excuse of a kitchen,” she said. “You can’t live off day-old Chinese food, you know.”

“Why not? I like Chinese food.” Grocery shopping rarely ever made it on the to-do list.

Laurel shook her head. “You’re an embarrassment to independent women everywhere. College dorm rooms are better stocked.”

“Peh!” Jackie waved her off. “Coffee, wine, and chicken fried rice. What more could a girl need?”

“Oh, how about some fruit? Vegetables? Maybe a little dairy once in a while?”

“There are veggies in the rice, and I get milk in every latte.”

Laurel put the bags down on the counter and began to unload the food. “Your body is going to hate you. You can’t catch bad guys on such a shitty diet.”

“Hasn’t been a problem so far,” Jackie said with a smile. “Besides, you bring all that healthy crap over a couple times a month, so it’s all good.”

“Only if you eat it.”

She shrugged and looked back to the board. “I eat some of it.”

“Uh-huh,” Laurel replied. “So, your nutrient-deprived brain figure out anything new for us to work with?

“Not really.” Jackie sighed and put her hands on her hips. “Other than being completely weirded out by the whole prospect of dealing with someone who drinks blood to stay alive, I haven’t figured out anything. Nothing that makes sense anyway. I’d like a motive that doesn’t involve a century-long serial-murder spree by the undead, and I’m just not finding one.”

Laurel wrinkled her nose at a Chinese food carton as she dropped it in the garbage. “You ruling out the penny?”

“No. I don’t know. We tracked Anderson and Fontaine around a four-square-mile area north of downtown all afternoon and got nothing. They didn’t stop to talk to anyone. Anderson’s phone calls were to Ms. Fontaine and work. That’s it.”

“He could figure we’re baiting him.”

“Or even if the penny is relevant to the case, it has nothing to do with what is motivating our killer.” Jackie tapped at the sequence of pictures detailing the murders. “It’s in these murders somewhere. We don’t have every last detail on them, but our intel indicates we’ve had someone killing off a group of five people every thirty-six years since Anderson’s family was killed.”

“This would make the fifth time it’s happened, too.” Laurel began to rinse off a tomato and bell pepper in the sink. “The numbers are significant.”

Jackie stared at the old picture of Nick and his family, the classic sheriff’s star pinned to the breast of his shirt. “Maybe he just snapped when his family died and has been reliving the murders over and over again.”

“And only do it every thirty-six years?” Laurel chopped the vegetables on a cutting board. “That is some serious self-restraint for someone who’s snapped.”

“Yeah, I know. Very atypical pattern,” Jackie said, “but a pattern nonetheless. If this holds to form, we should have another victim very soon. Could be another child.”

“We don’t have enough to bring him in.”

“Fuck, I’m not even sure it
is
him. The vibe is all wrong.” Jackie stepped away and sat down on the piano bench. “Or maybe he’s just snowing us. I can’t get a read on him at all.”

“He’s one hundred seventy-six years old,” Laurel said. “He’s had a lot of practice. You want blue cheese or Italian?”

“What?”

“Dressing. What kind of dressing you want?”

“God. You made us salad?”

Laurel laughed. “Shut up. It’s your monthly intake of vegetables.”

“It’s lame is what it is. Blue cheese.” Jackie took the bowl of salad without further complaint, however, and set it on top of the piano. Laurel set hers there as well and remained standing, looking across to the picture-strewn board. “We need another angle.”

“Who killed Anderson’s family?”

“No info there,” Jackie said. “Hadn’t been caught when the article was written.”

Laurel chewed thoughtfully on a chunk of tomato. “So, you think Anderson quit being a sheriff to go after whomever it was?”

“That would be my guess.” Jackie gave in and picked up the salad, forking in a blue-cheese-slathered chunk of lettuce. “I would.”

“Okay, what if he still is?”

“Still?” She looked at the board, trying to figure what Laurel might be seeing. “Chasing a ghost? Can ghosts murder people?”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Laurel said. “I was thinking more like—”

“Split personality!” Jackie stood up and pointed at Nick with her fork. “He kills them as Jekyll and then tries to catch the family killer with Hyde.”

“Actually,” Laurel said, nodding, “that might work. Psychotic break when his family was murdered, can’t find the killer, so makes it up himself in order to get revenge. Need evidence from him at a crime scene to have a shot at that one though.”

“Need to prove that penny was his somehow.”

“Which will be a bit difficult, given it was stolen,” Laurel added.

“By a ghost that you felt out at his office.”

“And we’ll prove this how?”

Jackie threw up her hands. “How the fuck would I know? You’re the ghost person, Laur. How do we deal with ghosts?”

She shrugged. “You don’t
deal
with them. You’re lucky if you can interact with them at all.”

“Well, that helps.” Jackie sat back down. “Maybe the ghost gave it back to Anderson?”

“Maybe,” Laurel agreed. “We can’t get a search warrant based on that though. You know no judge will accept anything supernatural. We need something concrete to link that penny to him.”

“Yeah, yeah. Technicalities.”

Laurel chuckled. “Don’t even think about going to look. Anderson won’t let you.”

“He will if he doesn’t have it or knows we won’t find it.”

“Hmmm. Does the Hyde know what the Jekyll is doing?”

“I know, it’s a stretch.” Jackie shook her head in frustration and dug back into the salad.

“Not so much. It’s a wild theory, but it works if things fall into place.”

“I prefer not to wait for someone else to die in order to find out.”

“All we can do is watch him and wait, Jackie. If he makes a move, we’ll be there.”

“And if we’re wrong, another child might be dead.”

“I know,” Laurel said. “We can only work with what we have, and we don’t have enough.”

Jackie slapped her hand down on the piano keys, creating a harsh jangle of notes. “Then we need to find it. What the hell are we missing? I’ll bet it’s right here in front of us.”

“We’ll find it. We always do.” Laurel laid a hand down on the keys by Jackie’s. “Play something. It always helps you think.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Okay, then eat the salad. You’ve eaten crap all day.”

Jackie straightened up and laid her hands upon the keys. “You’re a pain in the ass. Any requests?”

“Nope,” Laurel said. “Just something soothing.”

Jackie flexed her fingers, popping a couple knuckles, and thought for a moment on her choice. She played for no one, except on occasion for Laurel when she insisted. Everyone else brought out the nerves, and the embarrassment of screwing up was so not worth it.

The notes for Brahms’s
Lullaby
rose out of the Steinway like a soft breeze, drifting with ease around the room. Laurel smiled and closed her eyes, elbows resting on top of the piano, her chin in her hands. Jackie’s teacher had told her she had a very light touch upon the keys—“quiet grace,” she had called it. At the time, Jackie had not cared. Learning to play had been the important thing, carrying out her mother’s wish to have her learn. The song was one of Laurel’s favorites and not overly complicated to play, so it was often a choice when she was over. On more than one occasion it had put her to sleep.

Frustration melted away while Jackie’s fingers roamed over the keys. Her head cleared, but no revelations were forthcoming. The missing piece still lay out there in the ether somewhere.

Laurel sighed when the last of the notes faded away to silence. “I love you when you play—I mean,
it
—I love
it
when you play. Sorry, Freudian slip there.” She gave her a sheepish smile.

Jackie smiled back, utterly unsure of what to say. The words, the thought, had been lingering in the back of her mind since Laurel had admitted her sexuality. Jackie had conveniently stashed the thought back into the recesses of her brain, but now here it was, front and center.

“I know what you meant,” she said. “You’re my one and only fan.” Did that come out right? No. It didn’t sound right at all. “What I meant was . . . uh . . . I meant . . .”

Laurel stood up straight and laughed. “Sorry. Awkward moment. I know it’s something that needed to be said at some point, but this isn’t exactly what I’d been thinking. It’s just been on my mind a lot since yesterday, and I wanted to get it out there and . . . you know, clear the air. I don’t want it to make things weird between us.”

Jackie shook her head. “No weirdness. I’m fine with it, Laur. Really. You’re my best friend and partner. You’ve saved my butt more times than I can remember. So how could I not be fine with practically anything you do or say?”

She wrung her hands together. “I know. It’s just this is kinda different.” Her shoulders slumped and her face flushed. “I didn’t want you worrying I’d try to stick my tongue down your throat or something.”

“Laur!” Jackie had finally managed to get it out of her head from before, and now it was back. “I’m truly not worried about you doing that. Really.”

“Sorry. Sorry! Shit.” Her hands covered her mouth in shock. “I didn’t mean to. I take it back. Pretend I never said it.”

Jackie rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Not going to happen. Look, can we just shelve this for now? Please? I know this is, um, not how it’s supposed to work. I get that. Maybe it’ll change things, and maybe it won’t, but not now. We’ve got a case to figure out, and it’ll never happen with this stuff hovering around us. If there’s more you want to talk about, we will. I promise. Okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

Jackie sighed.
Please just let this go for now.
“All good, right?”

She nodded again. “Right.”

Jackie’s phone buzzed on top of the piano. Where had that call been two minutes ago? She picked it up. “Rutledge.”

“Hey, Jack, it’s Gamble. I’m going home. Peterson is taking over for me out here at Anderson’s, but I think he’s done for the night. Last I checked, he was sitting by his fireplace reading a book.”

“Figured as much,” she said. “Anything with Fontaine?”

“Um, no, but we lost track of her an hour or so ago and haven’t picked her back up yet. Apparently, she used to race motorcycles, and nobody can keep up with her.”

“Great. Thanks. Have them check in if anything comes up.”

“Will do,” he replied. “Anything on your end?”

“Besides huge amounts of frustration and lack of evidence? No.”

“Ouch. Sorry. I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Later.” Jackie clicked off and set the phone down. “Back to the board. Let’s go through it all again.”

Laurel walked around to the wall. “Did I hear him say Ms. Fontaine raced motorcycles?”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet she can swing from branches with her whip and call upon the feline forces of Chicago to assist her.”

Laurel made an amused “mmm” sound, which Jackie wisely chose to ignore. “Let’s just focus on dead people and vampires for now. Much safer topics.”