Jess pulled out the solar flash from his pocket and called softly to the actor.
“Mr. James.”
The moment he turned around, Jess flicked on the flash and traced it quickly across Clark’s neck and shoulder. There was an audible singe accompanied by a muted cry from James.
Jess felt vindicated, but also at the point of no return.
“Your daughter sends her regrets. She wanted to be here tonight but is having a hard time getting out of Mexico.”
He had to give James credit. Once confronted, the man didn’t pussyfoot around the situation. Jess thought he caught a glimpse of sharper-than-normal incisors at the corners of his taut mouth.
“I knew we should have killed you in my backyard instead of burying you in the desert,” said the thing that was once the famous actor Clark James.
6
Jess had been to the Palm Springs Cinema at least a hundred times. He had spent many a Saturday afternoon at bargain matinees escaping the heat and real life in the mansion on the hill. But he’d never watched a scene on the Cinema’s screen that rivaled the surreal one he was currently starring in—standing backstage against the flicker of celluloid with a movie idol who had retired because he had become a vampire.
“Who thought of the grave in the desert?” asked Jess. “Edward Rice?”
The actor nodded. “Too many bodies were piling up. First Tom Cox, then your father. It was easy enough to write them off. The first was a tragic road accident. And Walter had been sick for months—people would think he succumbed to his disease. But you were a different matter.”
“Because I was poking around. I show up dead and somebody else starts asking questions. But if I vanished…”
“… no one would think twice,” finished James. “You already walked away once for seven years.”
“So nobody would question a permanent disappearance,” Jess said.
“That was the plan, until your father got involved with his rescue operation.”
“How did he know where I was?”
“I’ve no idea. I didn’t even know he’d saved you until Rice told me. I have to presume he followed us.”
“Right after turning your daughter.”
The expression on Clark’s face changed to something bordering on murderous. Jess inched backwards and bumped into the stage wall. “Your father will pay dearly for that.”
Jess thought back to the conversation with Tracy in the cavern and her telling him about Clark’s blood grudge against Walter. “When did you find out about him and Tracy?”
“Shortly after you left.”
“How?”
“My daughter told me. She was clearly unhappy and I knew you had broken her heart. I was getting angrier and making rumblings about hiring a private eye to find you. Tracy was afraid I would do you bodily harm. I won’t say it didn’t enter my mind.”
“No one ever came looking as far as I could tell.”
“That’s because Tracy begged me not to. She still loved you, despite everything. The sad thing is I think she still does.”
Jess didn’t respond. He didn’t know how.
“Hearing all this from her was… difficult.” His lips tightened. “Especially the part about sleeping with my best friend.”
“Yet you and my father saw each other socially for years afterwards.”
“Men like me and Walter do a lot of things for appearance’s sake.” He pointed out toward the stage. “Like what you just saw. The public sees one person. Very few know what I really am.”
“That’s because you’ve destroyed anyone who does.”
“I didn’t ask for this, Jessie. Remember that.” Clark James loomed in close and Jess found himself scrunched tighter against the wall. “The thing that did this to me killed three men and a woman. I thought I was lucky to escape. It wasn’t until I got to your father’s hospital that I realized I would’ve been better off butchered in the Mexican jungle. Instead I am doomed to this wretched eternal thirst.”
“Which you kill others to quench.”
“Men and women who are going to die anyway. They are already wasting away at Meadowland. I actually give them peace as they drift into the great beyond. They are oblivious to pain by the time I am done.”
Jess thought this sounded like Clark James trying to justify his actions the past few years. He knew it didn’t hold water for all his victims.
“My father said you were killing him.”
“Walter Stark ruined my daughter’s life!”
A few disturbed movie patrons “ssssshed” from inside the theater. James backed off a step.
“Why did you wait all this time?” asked Jess. “You knew about him and Tracy five years ago.”
“Because even a man like your father should be spared this fate. It wasn’t until he started meeting with Tom Cox that I had to take matters into my own hands.” Sorrow took over his face. “And because of that I was punished even further.”
“When he turned Tracy.”
“I will drag him into the sunlight myself for that.”
“Where is he?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“How can that be?” asked Jess.
“Simple. I don’t know where he is. Do you think we belong to a fraternity and hang out together in some sort of vampire clubhouse?”
“I thought you would know because you turned him.”
“It doesn’t work that way. He’s trying to adapt, I’m sure. So far, he’s made a lousy go of it. Attacking Tracy was unforgivable. Killing Rice, well, not the greatest loss in the world.”
“Especially if I end up going to jail for it.”
“A fringe benefit.” The vampire smirked. “What did you exactly plan to accomplish here?”
“Get myself off that hook and prove what you are,” answered Jess. He withdrew the solar flash and the actor promptly snatched it from his hand.
“What in hell is this thing?” he asked.
Jess was more than a little unnerved by the vampire’s swift reflexes. “Remember Tag Marlowe?”
“Of course.”
“He made it. Call it Instant Daylight.”
He tried to grab it back but Clark James quickly pocketed it. Jess was beginning to think things couldn’t get much worse when a voice called from behind him.
“I thought that was you!”
Both men turned to see Sarah Stark standing there. Jaime Solis, the owner of the Palm Springs Country Club, was at her side.
Jess was wrong.
It could actually get a whole lot worse.
The quartet quickly moved to the lobby upon Solis’s suggestion so that their raised voices wouldn’t bother the movie patrons.
“Nice to see you’re out and about so shortly after the death of your dearly beloved,” Jess told his sister the moment they came into the light.
She moved close and whispered in his ear. “Fuck you, Jessie.” Then, she stepped away and spoke in a normal tone. “Jaime was kind enough to suggest it might take my mind off everything.”
“Nice of you,” Jess said to Solis.
“It is my pleasure,” Solis politely responded.
“The cops have been looking for you, Jessie. Where the hell have you been?”
“Out of town.”
“They think you fled because you killed Edward.”
“If that was true, why would I come back?”
“Hell if know!” seethed Sarah. Solis tried to step between the sparring siblings but Jess fended him off.
“I suggest staying out of this.”
Solis pointed at the lobby. “Maybe this isn’t the proper time or place.”
But Jess wasn’t hearing any of it. “I didn’t kill Edward Rice.”
“I saw you standing over his fucking body, Jessie! What am I supposed to think? That someone got there right before you?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what you’re supposed to think!” Jess yelled.
Solis stepped forward, and this time was able to separ
ate them. “Perhaps we should calm down. I’m sure your brother has a reasonable explanation for what he was doing there…”
“I told her that night. Rice called me.”
“I didn’t hear him,” insisted Sarah.
“Maybe you were already asleep. You were when his killer showed up,” suggested Jess.
“You should know,” accused Sarah.
“It wasn’t me!”
“Then who the hell was it?” Sarah screamed back.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Of course not! Because I’m looking at him.” Sarah’s hysteria slipped away and sadness took over. “I’ve known you all my life, Jessie. It’s been a long time since we got along. We’ve had lots of differences but I never thought you were capable of this.”
“I’m not, Sarah. I swear.”
Sister and brother stood there, somber and worn out. Solis was the first one to notice someone else had entered the lobby.
“Jess Stark. You’re under arrest.”
Jess turned around and saw two things that caused his heart to leap into his throat.
The first was the business end of Thaddeus Burke’s pistol pointed directly at his chest.
The second was that Clark James was nowhere to be seen.
Which was worse was a toss-up.
For Jess, they both just plain sucked.
EXCERPTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF EDWARD D. RICE
June 7
Clark James summoned me to Palm Springs Medical early that evening. I hadn’t seen him in a few days, and after spending that first week fending off the press at his request, I was happy to be back in my apartment trying to reassemble my life after the ill-fated trip to Mexico. I was filling out applications for any possible staff opportunity when I got the call.
“I want you to get me out of here,” Clark rumbled when I arrived at his room.
“Shouldn’t this be something you discuss with your doctors instead of me?”
“They don’t think I’m ready.”
“Perhaps they know best.” I had checked his chart upon entering. He still wasn’t eating much; what went down usually came right back up. He had received a few blood transfusions that seemed to help. But he was still fading during the daytime, which befuddled the team of physicians that descended on him like fresh meat.
“You saved my life down there. I’m going to trust you with it,” he told me.
“I looked at your chart, Clark. You’re hardly in any shape to go home.”
“I know that. I just don’t want to be here.”
That was when he first mentioned Meadowland and Walter Stark.
June 9
It took a couple of days of Clark throwing his weight around and Walter Stark’s patronage to move the actor from Palm Springs Medical to the convalescent facility. The PSM staff made Clark sign tons of releases, and he wasn’t the only one. I also had to put my name and reputation down in ink on numerous dotted lines.
I didn’t have much choice. My medical career was in shambles. I quickly discovered most doors were closed before I even got to them. It seemed my adventures in Mexico and subsequent involvement with Clark James upon his tumultuous return to the Desert had tarnished me as a viable candidate. In many circles, I was blamed for Clark’s worsening condition; somehow I should have done more when treating him in the jungle. Other employers found great fault with the way I had dealt with the press regarding the actor, citing me as being unprofessional and overstepping the bounds of the patient-physician relationship. I was shocked, thinking I had just been protecting Clark from the rabid media horde. I was extremely disheartened to hear terms like “star-fucker” and “glory-seeker” bandied about in tabloids and whispered in hospital hallways where I was trying to gain employment.
So when Clark James said he could secure me a position on staff at a reputable institution like Meadowland in exchange for getting him transferred there—I saw it as an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. When I asked how he could guarantee me a job, he told me he’d known Walter Stark for a couple of decades and the man owed him big time.
That was how I agreed to take full responsibility for Clark James and signed the six-inch stack of appropriate documents facilitating his move to Meadowland.
I’ve come to regret that decision more than I can ever tell.
I began feeling that way almost immediately.
All it took was Clark James dying two days later.
7
“Why did you leave the country?”
Sitting in the sheriff’s office, Jess considered the best way to answer the question. The only good thing about his situation was Burke hadn’t thrown a murder charge at him yet. So far it was just conspiracy to withhold information pertaining to a crime. Unfortunately for Jess, he knew the real cause of Edward Rice’s death was not easily explained—unless Burke was in on the whole thing. And Jess had a hard time believing this bureaucrat was, as Benji had put it, a “familiar” to Clark and his brethren. If anything, he suspected there was some kind of fiscal arrangement, possibly blackmail, getting Burke to look the other way at Cox’s and Walter’s deaths.
Jess went with a “What? Me Worry?” attitude. “I took a little vacation.”
“Hours after standing over Edward Rice’s body.”
Sadly, Burke was born without a sense of humor, so Jess moved on to option two: telling the parts of the truth that would keep him out of a straitjacket.
“Don’t know how many times you want to hear me say it, but Rice called me over to see him and was dead by the time I got there…”
“… which we only have your word for.”
“Check his phone records. You’ll see he called me at the Sands Motel.”
“I’m not disputing that. We got hold of the phone company. What bothers me is why you would sneak out of town in the trunk of Maria Flores’s car and cross the border into Mexico.”
This caught Jess off guard. He could see the sheriff got more than a little pleasure from it.
“Not as stupid as you think, huh, Stark?”
Three or four smart-ass answers popped into Jess’s head, but he decided it wasn’t the time to let them escape his lips. Instead, he thought it best to let the cop show off a bit so Jess could see exactly how much deep shit he was in.
“How did you find out about that?”
Burke proved Jess’s supposition right by immediately starting to brag. “We found the cell phone you tossed and quickly ran the Vegas lead into the ground. It got me thinking.” The sheriff actually tapped his forehead with an index finger. “Maybe he went the other way. We ran down a list of all your known associates, family, that good-for-nothing friend of yours Lutz, to see if we could pull a match for flights and border crossings, and just this morning got a hit on Flores at the border. I thought it was the maid so I was kind of shocked when I saw the car was registered to the daughter. Got yourself a new girlfriend, do ya?”
Jess tried not to grit his teeth as he told Burke, “Maria has nothing to with this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. How ’bout aiding and abetting a suspect in a murder case for starters?”
“Anything you want to charge her with, go ahead and put on me.”
“Sensitive? I get it. She’s a damn good lookin’ piece of ass.”
Jess started to get out of his seat, ready to throttle Burke’s neck. Then, realizing the man was probably itching for him to make exactly such a move, Jess settled back down. The sheriff chuckled, which infuriated Jess more than ever, but this time he didn’t rise to the bait.
“Easy, son,” said Burke, with the smoothness of a man who took great pleasure in getting under people’s skin. “I just need you to talk. But don’t think I won’t make good on that threat to haul your girl in and lock her the hell up.”
Jess considered his surroundings. At least he was sitting in the sheriff’s office and not an interview room. That led him to believe Burke was going to have a hard time making things stick. The sher
iff would have Jess shackled to a metal table if he had a rock-solid case. He thought the man might be playing him—placing Jess in a more relaxed atmosphere where he would be more liable to slip without realizing it. Jess presumed someone was right outside Burke’s door ready to pounce and read him his rights the moment he screwed up.
“What exactly do you want to know, Sheriff?”
Burke leaned back, smug and satisfied. “I assume asking you why you killed Edward Rice is a nonstarter?”
“You assume right.”
Burke pulled a pad off his desk and uncapped a pen. “How about skipping town? Want to explain why you went, and more importantly, why you came back?”
“I thought it was the best way to find evidence to expose the real killer.”
“Evidence? Down in Mexico?”
“That’s right.”
“Where?”
“Outside a small village called Santa Alvarado. Ever heard of it?”
“Can’t say that I have.” Burke’s blank look convinced Jess the man was telling the truth. Which was going to make explaining things a whole lot harder. “Did you find something there?”
“Actually, yeah.”
“Feel like sharing?”
This was the tricky part. Open the undead door and a guy like Burke, unless he was in on it, was likely going to slam it in your face. Jess thought maybe there was a different track to come in on.
“Why do you think I had Benji Lutz call and tell you to come down to the theater tonight?”
“I figure you were sick of running and decided to confess. But that’s clearly not the case. Care to enlighten me?”
“I was going to present you with proof.”
“Proof?”
Jess took a deep breath. Then, figuring what the hell, just came out with it. “That Clark James was involved in the deaths of Tom Cox, Edward Rice, and my father.”
Burke laughed. “That’s quite a mouthful, son. And an even bigger accusation.”
“It’s one I can prove.”
“With something you found in some shit-hole South of the Border.”
Descending Son Page 30
