Losing a body had ended any hopes for my career as a detective. Silke was right that detecting was my life. Mom was right that I missed the action. I wanted to be right about something. I wanted a do-over. I wanted to find the creep who’d killed LaTonya Sanford so she would stop haunting me. I wanted to sleep at nights and not have to get up to watch reality TV.
I’d thought it through and I was ready to go back in and find a way to make things right.
After lunch, I insisted on going back to my place to go over everything in my mind.
Alone.
I needed to psych myself before going ahead with my plan.
LaTonya Sanford had gotten to me in the deepest way possible. Guilt. Though her body had disappeared, I knew in my gut the teenager had been murdered. The case had never been dead for me. I knew it would never be until I’d solved it. The similarity between LaTonya and Thora was simply too in-my-face to ignore.
Once inside my apartment, I made over the cats, fed them and put on a pot of coffee.
After which, I stared at the tattered folder still on the low table in front of the couch. I stared down at it for a moment and simply breathed, tried to get that catch out of my chest. I was wound up.
A cup of strong French roast cleared my head.
Feeling renewed, I parked myself on the couch and once more stared at the folder as one of the cats jumped up beside me. Sarge. I didn’t have to look at him. I knew him by feel and sound. He purred noisily and settled next to my hip. A flurry of fur caught my eye as it landed delicately on the table next to the folder. Cadet. She always tried to get in my way when I was concentrating the hardest. Knowing they were starving for affection, I petted both cats before taking a long slug of coffee.
Then I opened the folder.
LaTonya Sanford stared out at me. She had been a beautiful girl. An innocent girl from all accounts.
A very dead girl.
I would swear to that on a stack of Bibles.
I went over everything in the folder for maybe the hundredth time. I especially concentrated on the cult research I’d done. I’d caught a feature about cults on one of those reality cop shows, and instinct had led me to investigate cults that required blood sacrifice.
Like vampire cults.
One of the stories was about a woman who was led into a room naked and made to lie down on a raised dais draped with bloodred velvet. A nude man poured the contents of a pitcher onto the woman…the mingled blood of the other cult members, who then licked every drop off her. The man who’d poured the blood then sank sharpened eyeteeth into the woman’s neck and drank, after which he slit himself below his groin and made the woman drink from him.
There were other accounts, equally disturbing, combining blood sacrifice with sex.
Is that what had happened to LaTonya? And now to Thora?
The accounts of cult rituals I had gathered didn’t include murder, but accidents happened.
I was as sure that LaTonya Sanford had been dead when I’d checked her vitals as I was of anything.
“What happened to you?” I asked her black-and-white photo.
I had to find out.
Though I was armed, that healthy tickle of fear kept me vigilant as I approached one of the remaining project high-rises in the complex where the Sanford family lived. No one was safe there. Not the residents. Not the police. When responding to a call, a cop I knew had been wounded by a sniper on the roof. Last year, some scum had even thought it fun to shoot at the school in the buildings’ midst. Rather than being repaired as they fell apart, the buildings were being demolished, one at a time, and the residents dispersed to hopefully better living conditions throughout the city.
Ironically, though, LaTonya Sanford had survived the projects only to be killed halfway to the Lake Street area near the bar, in what was considered a safer area.
I’d called ahead to make certain her family hadn’t been moved out, so I went right in. The building’s hallway was dark, a single bare bulb lighting the way to the elevator. I knew that often elevators in these buildings weren’t operational, that residents had to use the narrow, poorly lit stairways where gangbangers sometimes awaited them.
The elevator doors opened within seconds of my pressing the call button.
A few minutes later, I knocked at the apartment door.
Mrs. Sanford herself opened it. She was still a young woman in her early to midthirties, but I swear she’d aged a decade since we’d last met. Losing a child could do that to a person. I’d seen it happen too many times in this city.
“Detective Caldwell,” she said in a soft, musical voice. She stepped back to let me in.
“Mrs. Sanford.”
I inclined my head as I passed her. I couldn’t say it was good to see her, not under the circumstances. I’d been here before, so I was already familiar with the painted concrete-block walls and the scattering of worn furniture. The family’s poverty was evident, but so was the mother’s pride. The room was neat and several plants bloomed in the window. She offered me an iced tea, which I accepted. When she brought two glasses back from the kitchen, we sat opposite each other, me in a chair, her on the couch.
I sipped at the tea. “Mmm, good.” As much as I hated to do so, I had to ask. “You never heard from LaTonya, right?”
“You told me she was dead. You found her.”
“But her body disappeared. You know the department considers her a runaway.”
“Not my LaTonya. She’d let me know if she was alive.”
“I understand. I had to ask.”
“You got new evidence or something?”
“I’m afraid not. But your daughter haunts me, Mrs. Sanford. I wanted to take another look at the case.”
“You so interested, how come you never answered my call? I left a message.”
“I’m sorry, but I never got it. When was this?”
“A couple weeks after.”
At which time I was under psychiatric evaluation. Of course they wouldn’t have given me the time of day. Forget a message that might be important. “Your call—what was it about?”
“I got my baby’s purse back.”
“One she was using that night?”
Mrs. Sanford nodded. “Someone must of found it. Got delivered in the mail in a big envelope. No money. Someone had kindness to return it, though.” Mrs. Sanford rose, saying, “It’s right over here.”
As the victim’s mother crossed to some shelving, I thought about the implication. Someone had found the purse. A potential witness? But my elation deflated when she returned to the couch and handed me the purse, still in a big brown envelope.
No return address.
No note included.
No clue as to the sender.
But Mrs. Sanford watched me with an expectant expression, and I couldn’t bear to let her down by saying what I was thinking, that getting the purse back might be of no help whatsoever. It was highly unlikely that there would even be viable fingerprints.
Instead of discouraging her, I fetched a couple of tissues—I didn’t happen to have plastic gloves on me, of course—and handled the bag carefully so as not to smudge prints if there actually were any that might be identified. Opening it, I turned it upside down and let everything spill out on a table. My gaze quickly swept over the contents, then stalled out. My pulse jumped and my mouth went dry as my gaze connected with a pack of matches.
The cover was black, the letters scarlet: Heart of Darkness.
My own heart was thudding. Hard.
I now had evidence of a connection between the two missing girls.
“Jeez, hold still,” Silke said as she applied a second coat of white makeup over my face and shoulders.
It was early evening and we were back at her place and in the midst of some hocus-pocus that would let me pretend to be her tonight. But the longer it took, the harder it was for me not to squirm. This was torture.
“How do you go through this every day?” I asked, my throat still dry
from inhaling the loose powder Silke had dusted me with in between makeup layers.
“It’s a ritual that gives me pleasure. You know, time to think.”
I knew it took her at least an hour to get Goth. And that was in addition to coloring her hair bloodred, which she’d already done to me. Luckily, I’d convinced her that I would strangle her with my bare hands if I couldn’t easily get my hair back to normal, so on the way home, we’d picked up a product that washed out.
“Why don’t you go over the important stuff while I do your eyes?” Silke ordered.
“Okay, okay.” Trying to ignore the thick black pencil about to attack my eye, I concentrated on the people she’d told me about—the major players, so to speak. “Desiree Leath, owner of Heart of Darkness…tall, thin, pale, long blue-black hair. Hung Chung, head security guard of the whole alternative scene, both bar and shops…Asian, the sides of his head shaved. Jake DeAtley, bartender…classic dark and handsome good looks, a small scar on his cheek. Blaise Allcock, tattoo and piercing artist…fair and somewhat effeminate, his arms tattooed from shoulders to wrists. Elvin Mowry, head of the supposed vampire clan and Thora’s squeeze…slender pretty boy with spiked purple hair. Thora Nelson, beautiful, black shoulder-length hair with red streaks. Wait a minute. What about Raven?”
“She looks like a little bird—fragile with short black hair that tufts out like ruffled feathers. She also has three eyebrow rings.”
“Got it.”
My plan was to work at the bar for a night or two and not only get the lay of the land, but to see what people knew about LaTonya and Thora. I’d never made the connection to the bar before, because that alley where I’d found LaTonya’s body had been several blocks north, and the area that lay between was an old manufacturing district. But now I figured she could have been walking home from the bar. I hoped Raven would show because Silke didn’t have a last name on her. If she didn’t show, then I would try to get someone to tell me where I could find her.
“Your memory has always been right on,” Silke said, switching the black pencil to my other eye. “But just in case, I’ll tune in, make sure you stay on track.”
Though having backup was always a good idea, Silke’s poking around in my head wasn’t. “If I get stuck, I can call you on my cell.”
“We have different strengths, Shell. This one’s mine, so let me do what I can do.”
“You’ve done your part,” I insisted, keeping my voice firm without raising it. “Leave the investigation to me.”
Thankfully, Silke didn’t argue.
When we’d first showed signs of being in synch, Mom had told us we should each be our own person and not draw attention to the fact that we were different or people would treat us…well, like we were different. Even as a kid, the connection had me freaked, and since I’d wanted to fit in, I’d tuned Silke out.
That was the thing about us. We had different strengths. Mine was logic and focus and fearlessness on the street. Silke, on the other hand, got into the woo-woo of life, a place I really didn’t want to visit.
So when she said, “Um, Shell, there’s something I didn’t tell you,” while outlining my lips with that same black pencil, my warning antenna went up.
“Mmph-umph,” I muttered, not wanting that black line to go off and give me a weird smile.
“You know the vampire cult I told you about…” Her expression wary, she stopped the outlining and backed up. “Well, there’s worse.”
Though I had a feeling I wasn’t going to like this, I said, “Go on.”
“I’ve heard rumors that someone hanging at the bar is a—” she cleared her throat “—a real vampire.”
My thudding heart steadied and I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, okay.” Now she was going over the top.
“I’m not kidding.”
“So I’ll wear garlic.”
“You shouldn’t joke about it.” Silke slapped down the pencil and picked up a pot of purple eye shadow. “You joke about anything that you can’t see in black-and-white. That’s why I didn’t want to say anything. Close your eyes.”
Silke dabbed a bit of color on my right lid and then on the left. But she didn’t go on and on about this real-vampire business. Which made me wonder why she’d brought it up in the first place. I knew she was frustrated with me for not wanting to develop this mental pathway she was so into. I suspected she believed in lots of things I would find totally unbelievable.
“You can open.”
I did and was startled by my own reflection. I’d shed my girl-next-door look for one that would make heads turn. I looked more like Silke than ever before. No one would be able to tell I wasn’t her.
“Okay, Silke, show me how you walk in this getup…carry a tray…count your money.”
I was leaving nothing to chance, and becoming a Silke clone didn’t come naturally. So I spent the next half hour imitating her walk and gestures and getting down her expressions and patter. Good thing I was a quick study.
When we were done, Silke started sorting through the lipsticks on the makeup tray. “You aren’t going to take any foolish chances, are you?”
“Hey, this is my kind of gig.” And I would be wearing a weapon, which I could legally do off duty. “I’m going on a fact-finding mission, is all. What could go wrong?”
Famous last words.
Well, let’s hope not.
But an hour or so later as I approached the building that held Heart of Darkness, I got that twist in my gut I always get when going undercover. I’d done this kind of thing dozens of times in my career, starting when I was a tactical officer working vice, and I knew all I had to do was breathe and get into my part and I would be okay. It was probably the same way Silke felt before going on stage. Then, once there in the spotlight, everything seemed real and the butterflies went away.
Only thing was, in an official capacity, I’d worked with a team, including someone to watch my back, even if from a distance. This time, I would have to remember the only backup I had was Silke via cell phone.
So basically, I was going it alone.
I thought about that all the way to the bar.
Though I could have parked somewhere west on Randolph, I wanted to check out what was going on under the el on Lake Street. Besides, it wouldn’t do to let anyone who knew Silke’s old beater see me getting out of something more upscale.
So I parked my car under the tracks and walked around to the main drag, all the while keeping an eye peeled for anything out of place. All I saw was a hiker getting out of a car and jogging back the way he’d come. The area was still in an early stage of gentrification and not necessarily safe at night. Thora should have known that, I thought, part of me hoping against hope that she would actually show at the bar tonight and I could tell Silke all the fuss was for nothing.
Only my gut told me that wasn’t going to happen. I was ninety-nine percent convinced that Thora Nelson had met the same fate as LaTonya Sanford.
A mile west of the Loop, Randolph Street had once been part of the city’s old market area, but now it was a mix of upscale restaurants and businesses and paper companies with a couple of those surviving meat and produce markets thrown in the mix. Heart of Darkness was the main attraction in a converted building that held several other businesses: Snazzy Trash, resale and sexy clothing mart; Taboo Tattoo, tattoo and piercing parlor; Bad Hair Day, cuts and coloring salon; and Garden Goths, fantastical critters depot.
As I approached the door of the bar, I caught my reflection in the plate glass. I still couldn’t believe how very Silke I looked wearing her long, ragged-hemmed black skirt and red bustier. Thankfully, I’d insisted on adding one of her capes. This one was black and short enough not to get in my way. Not only did the cape give me a little added modesty, but it also hid my gun, which I had holstered behind me at the waist.
The bustier was making me nuts, though, so I sucked in my gut and pulled it up in front. Then, taking heart that even I couldn’t tell the difference between Silke and
me, I opened the door of the establishment and stepped inside to determine whether someone connected with the bar was a killer.
Jake DeAtley sensed a new arrival and turned from the drink he was mixing to see who had slipped in the door.
Silke Caldwell, late again.
Not that it really mattered since the place had yet to fill up. But the Goth waitress stopped just inside the door and looked around as if she was hesitant. But just for a moment. Then she gathered herself together and marched back to the small office where employees signed in.
Curious, Jake couldn’t stop himself from watching her, which in itself was a curious event. While he thought Silke was pretty enough—as far as he could tell, that is, considering the war paint covering her fine features—he could take her or leave her. But tonight, there was something about her that piqued his interest.
Something he couldn’t put a finger on.
“Chéri, the drink,” Desiree said, her accent lightly French. “We keep the customers happy, yes?”
“Sure, boss, coming right up.”
Getting back to work, Jake wondered how many drinks he would have to make before he was either satisfied or too bored to keep up the pretense.
As he served the waiting customer, Jake glanced at the bar owner, whose appearance was as steamy as her voice. Her waist-length hair was loose, a sheet of blue-black satin around naturally pale skin. She appeared to have been sewn into the midnight-blue dress that barely covered what passed for breasts. Desiree was so model thin, he swore any day she would melt to nothing and float away in the ether.
Not that he was interested in her personally, either.
He wasn’t interested in anything but his mission.
The two non-Goth women sitting at the end of the bar closest to the door had ordered a couple of Bloody Cosmopolitans, the red being a big dose of cranberry juice. He was always mystified by the “normal” people who hung around the bar for a free show. Locals mostly, but the bar’s reputation had been spreading. Heart of Darkness had become a hip hangout.
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