BloodlustBundle

by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor

  “I’ll talk to her about it. You seem very upset.”

  “Of course I’m upset! I agreed to go undercover to stop anything like this from happening again!”

  Mom nodded, and I would swear her voice grew gentler when she said, “Then you’re not going to like the rest. The girl’s body has already been examined and there’s evidence of rape.”

  “Semen?” I asked, automatically thinking if Chung had gotten his hands on her again, we could run his DNA.

  “No semen. But bruising and tearing.”

  I took a big breath and tried to let it go. It felt as if it took forever to get rid of the extra air, and even when I did, I couldn’t breathe normally.

  “There’s even more,” I said, and told Mom about the scenario on the stairwell that I’d interrupted.

  To her credit, Mom listened without judgment. And if she already knew, if Silke had already told her about my fight with the security guard, she didn’t say so.

  She merely said, “So this Hung Chung could be the one.”

  “He’s definitely a suspect.”

  And if I found out he had raped and killed Raven…

  I realized my hands were balled into fists so tight my fingers began to hurt. I wanted to rip him apart with my bare hands. Taking several more deep breaths, I got my anger under control.

  “So the medical examiner has already done his report. What about the missing blood?” I wondered if Chung could be part of Mowry’s vampire cult. “How was it taken?”

  “Through a slash on the inside of the arm.”

  “Like LaTonya Sanford and Thora Nelson.”

  “But not like the man—his blood was drained through holes in his neck. As to this Raven, the M.E. thinks the blood was being removed during the sex act.”

  The visual I got on that one made me wish I could have done something more. I could hardly believe the girl I’d saved last night was dead this morning. I should have tried harder to get her to press charges—maybe then she would still be alive. “How has the press not gotten hold of this?”

  “They missed the John Doe. Or maybe they simply weren’t interested in him. And we’re keeping a low profile now. No need for a public panic.”

  “Still, I’m surprised some reporter didn’t pick it up on a scanner.”

  “It didn’t go out over the air. The beat cops were informed that if they found another one, they were to call for backup in code.”

  The pieces of the puzzle were mounting, but they didn’t exactly fit together perfectly.

  LaTonya Sanford, Thora Nelson, Raven and the homeless John Doe…someone really was taking their blood, if not in the same way. The women had been bled from wounds in their arms, the man from puncture holes in his neck.

  So now Mom believed me.

  Another person I knew believed a bloodsucker was hanging around the bar.

  Jake DeAtley.

  Again, I wondered if his interest in the subject was official. “You don’t by any chance already have an undercover officer working Heart of Darkness?”

  Mom’s surprise seemed genuine. “No. And as far as I know, neither does anyone else. Why?”

  I told her about Jake DeAtley. “He admitted he was investigating but wouldn’t say why.”

  “And you couldn’t get more out of him?”

  “Maybe I could…if I get closer.”

  Mom’s expression registered her understanding. “That’s not an option.”

  “Right.”

  Not an option procedure-wise, perhaps, but definitely an option I couldn’t help considering personally. Not that I would prostitute myself for a lead. But I could work Jake for more information.

  “I need to check DeAtley out through the system for priors or arrests,” I said, telling her how I’d already run him and others linked to the bar on the Internet for information and coming up with nothing on any of them. I had to admit I was hoping Jake would come up clean, but something was going on with him. “I wonder if DeAtley could have some connection to one of the victims.”

  “If he does, we’ll find that out, too.” Mom’s brow furrowed. “Shelley, the case went to Detective Norelli, and he’s working with Walker.”

  “Great. Give the case to the very guy who laughed in my face in the first place. He’ll probably bury the case so no one will evaluate him.”

  “Not hardly. Not when we have two bodies in the morgue. I’ll get you transferred back to Area 4 immediately.”

  That had been my goal, but the idea of having to work under Norelli didn’t sit well with me.

  “I’m already undercover and I’m working this alone.”

  “Not anymore you’re not. You’ll work the case as part of the team or you won’t work it at all.”

  I knew she meant business. This wasn’t my mom anymore; this was a cop with a lot of clout, clout that she could use for me or against me.

  “I’m not handing this investigation over to anyone.”

  “That’s not your decision.”

  “I can go on furlough,” I warned her.

  “It won’t be approved.”

  “Then I’ll get the blue flu.”

  Blue flu being the operative phrase when cops thought to go on strike without actually going on strike, which they couldn’t do by law.

  “Detective, be reasonable.”

  “I am reasonable, Commander. I’m on the inside—they’re not. It’s my lead. I won’t have Norelli messing up this case. It’s my case. It has been since I laid eyes on LaTonya Sanford in that alley.”

  “All right. I’ll see what I can do.”

  Mom made the calls necessary to get me cleared and assigned back to Area 4. She filled in the Area 4 commander about my undercover activities and said she was certain that Detectives Norelli and Walker would bow to my greater knowledge of the case. I watched her work in awe.

  After hanging up, she said, “It’s still their case technically, but you’re in charge of the undercover operation. You’ll run it the way you want.”

  Reluctant partners. This wouldn’t make any of us happy, but it would have to do. Compromise. Mom admitted to having done it. I guess I could, too.

  Her pulling strings put extra pressure on me. I had to get it right, to prove to my mother that her faith in me wasn’t wasted. I had to get justice for LaTonya and Thora and Raven, and yes, the homeless guy, too.

  I would make the best of working with detectives who gave me no respect.

  I would succeed in putting the murderer away despite them.

  Returning to the Area 4 office before donning my Goth gear for the evening was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. I wasn’t expecting a grand reunion—not from the detectives who’d held me in so little regard—but I was hoping for a truce.

  Detective Mike Norelli looked up from his work when I walked into the pasty green-walled bull pen and nodded. “Caldwell” was all he said before going back to whatever report he was perusing.

  “Norelli,” I muttered, my lips stiff. Most of the other detectives working the phones or filling out the endless paperwork didn’t so much as glance my way. The only other woman in the room, Detective Stella Jacobek, gave me a thumbs-up. I waved and put my things on my old desk, which I’d been told was still free. I nodded to the man who usually teamed up with Norelli. “Walker.”

  The other half of the violent-crimes tag team gave me a wide-toothed grin. “I knew you couldn’t stay away from us for long.”

  As far as I was concerned, forever wouldn’t have been long enough.

  Detectives Mike Norelli and Jamal Walker were as different as night and day. Middle-aged and beefy, Norelli wore a blah dark suit, white shirt and forced smile. His tie usually held some clue as to what he’d had for lunch. Younger and fitter, Walker had more interest in being a snappy dresser. Today he wore a canary-yellow suit jacket that made his coffee skin appear darker.

  “So apparently you’ve been playing loosey-goosey with the system,” Norelli said.

  I clenched my jaw
and turned the grimace into a smile. “Go to hell.”

  “So what you got?” Walker leaned back in his chair and hooked his hands behind his head as if preparing himself for a good story.

  Well, I could give him one if I gave it all up. But I wasn’t there yet.

  So I said, “Another missing body and a couple that aren’t.” Which reminded me to turn in the gargoyle pin to the lab to check for fingerprints. “Suspects? A sexual predator and some wanna-be vampires.”

  “Vampires!” Norelli snorted into his paperwork.

  “Watch it, Norelli, or I’ll let one of them feed on you.”

  Walker snorted. “Hey, Norelli, that sounded like a threat.”

  “Jealous I didn’t include you, Walker?” I asked in an innocent voice. “Oh, I know I make you laugh, but that’s not intentional. And now it seems that I have the last laugh, since I was right about LaTonya Sanford, after all.”

  “Hey, come on,” Norelli growled, “lighten up.”

  Norelli didn’t like to be wrong. Being told he was wrong put him in a bad mood. Or maybe just knowing he had to work with me had been enough to twist his boxers into a knot.

  The two detectives exchanged glances. And while I waited to see what road they were going to take, tension sucked the life out of me. I felt trapped with no way out.

  So when Walker said, “Look, about the Sanford case…you gotta admit it didn’t look good or they wouldn’t have shrunk you,” I breathed a little easier.

  That was probably the closest I could expect to an apology.

  He added, “The important thing is we stop this killer or killers before someone else dies.”

  “Well, something we can agree on at last,” I said. “I need to see what you’ve got.”

  “Not much there,” Norelli growled as he handed me the murder book.

  I spent the next half hour reading the reports that started with the discovery of the homeless man found dead and drained of blood. Not much activity there. While they’d done some interviews, they truly hadn’t canvassed the neighborhood. They’d kept a low profile on the case, as Mom had said. But how long could this be kept out of the media?

  I continued reading. Only when they’d found Raven early this morning had the investigation stepped up.

  Norelli and Walker had even been to Heart of Darkness late this afternoon and had interviewed Desiree Leath, who had seemed truly shocked by the news of Raven’s death. They hadn’t told her how the girl had died, of course, and they hadn’t mentioned the homeless man.

  They’d questioned Jake, as well, which reminded me that I wanted as much information on him as I could get. Starting the process myself, I found no priors and no arrests, a fact that relieved me. When I tried looking him up in the DMV, I could find no records of a driver’s license or plates. I hadn’t gotten a look at his car, so I supposed he could have out-of-state plates. And an out-of-state license. Or a fake name.

  I needed to get home and get ready for tonight, so I asked a support officer to keep digging for me. I wanted anything she could find on him. Anything. I told her to broaden the search if she had to. Our system was connected to nationwide data banks. She assured me that the results would be ready for me first thing in the morning. I also gave her Thora’s gargoyle pin and asked her to get it to the lab.

  Then, turning my attention back to the murder book, I said, “Norelli, you missed something here.”

  “What?” he growled.

  “LaTonya Sanford. I don’t see anything in this report about her. She was the first victim.”

  “But she wasn’t a case.”

  “Good thing I put together a murder book for her anyway. You might want to loosen up and use it.”

  Before he could comment, I dived back into his notes, hoping to find a pattern. But other than both victims being a couple of quarts low, as Mom had put it, and both being found in the vicinity of Heart of Darkness—within a quarter of a mile—the murders might have been committed by two different people. The man had been drained through two puncture holes in his neck, while Raven had been drained on the inside of her arm, near the elbow. The other difference being that Raven had been raped, while there was no evidence of sexual assault with the homeless man.

  I glanced up to check out my partners-in-solving-crime. Norelli was still at his paperwork and Walker was on the phone, no doubt trying to track down information of some kind.

  I closed the book and walked it back to Norelli.

  “We need to talk about tonight,” I said, swinging into take-charge mode. “I need four people, two plants—one in the bar, the other wandering the stores in the mall until they close—and two in a car outside.”

  Since they’d done the interview with Desiree and Jake, the only way Norelli and Walker could be players in the undercover scenario was if they took the car duty—boring, boring, boring. So there was an upside to the situation, after all.

  “Can you get me what I need?” I asked.

  The middle-aged detective saluted me. “Yes, ma’am!”

  “C’mon, Norelli,” Walker said. Then he turned to me. “You gonna wear a wire?”

  “A wire’s not necessary, at least not at this stage.”

  “What if you get in trouble?” Norelli asked.

  “Then I’ll whistle real loud.”

  “Still a smart-ass,” he grumbled.

  Maybe I was, but after what I’d gone through with these guys, who could blame me? “Can you get me the men or not?”

  Walker said, “We’ll get ’em. We’re working in the spirit of cooperation, right, Norelli?”

  “Yeah, right,” the other detective growled back.

  Yeah, right.

  “Cracking this case is gonna look good on my résumé,” Walker went on. “I see a promotion in my future.”

  Dream on.

  It would be me who would see that justice was done and that LaTonya Sanford could rest in peace at last.

  Chapter 9

  Jake kept an eye on the woman calling herself Silke all night. Of course now he knew her name was Shelley Caldwell and that she was Silke’s sister.

  The night before, he’d been aware of Silke being inside the apartment—he’d heard her moving around—and he’d feigned leaving so he could eavesdrop and learn what he needed to know. Unfortunately, a couple had entered the building and had given him a hard stare before he’d heard more than her name and the fact that the two women were sisters. He’d left before there’d been an incident. He didn’t yet have all the pieces of Shelley Caldwell, but he would.

  Since her shift had begun, Shelley had been flippant with him as usual.

  The more he saw her, spoke to her, argued with her, the more she piqued his interest.

  She looked in his general direction without meeting his gaze and said, “I need a couple of Bloody Cosmopolitans and a red wine.”

  “Is that it?”

  “That’s all the customers asked for.”

  “What about you? What do you need?”

  As if unable to help herself, she looked directly at him. “A break.”

  Thump-thump…thump-thump…thump-thump…

  He was in tune with her heartbeat. Her scent tantalized him. His skin grew sensitive; even the callused pads on his fingertips sizzled as if electrified. And when he really looked at her, Shelley took on an unearthly glow.

  He filled the order and set it on the counter.

  If she noticed anything untoward, she didn’t react to it. Then she simply turned away from him, tray and drinks in hand.

  He watched her make her way up the stairs and to the table next to Mowry’s. The wanna-be vamp watched her with hungry eyes, too, but Jake knew she wouldn’t be sucked in by him. She had her own agenda.

  So who was she really, beyond her name? And what was her investment in playing detective?

  One way to find out. He’d stick to her like glue.

  With or without her permission.

  Jake’s watching me all night was unnerving. I didn�
�t need that extra burden of knowing I was already being watched.

  At first I hadn’t spotted the undercover officer, which in my book was a case of good news–bad news since I was still conflicted about going official with the investigation. Eventually, I spotted Hanson at the bar nursing a beer. I hardly recognized him in a black T-shirt and his hair pasted up with gel.

  The officers in the unmarked car were parked outside a few doors down—a male and a female officer who were putting on a lovey-dovey performance. Well, hopefully it was a performance. Not that I wanted them here at all, but since I was ordered to cooperate, I wanted the best outcome, which meant they needed to focus on something other than their libidos.

  Between the meeting with Mom and having to report in to the Area 4 office, I hadn’t gotten any downtime before I’d had to do my transformation and get to the bar. Silke had been as devastated as I about Raven. To her credit, Mom had actually told Silke about the poor girl’s death, so I hadn’t had to go over the details.

  For some reason, Chung seemed to be absent tonight. I still wanted to rip him apart with my bare hands, only I didn’t have the energy. Luckily, my adrenaline kicked in on high, keeping me going, and now, as I approached the owner’s office in hopes of getting some information out of her, my adrenaline level felt as if it was about to skyrocket.

  “Desiree, do you have a few minutes?”

  She turned to me, her pale, gaunt features glowing softly in the dim light. “What is it, Silke?”

  Her calling me by that name was a reminder that I had to play it as my twin would. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  Sitting behind her desk, her long blue-black hair surrounding her shoulders like a luxurious cape, Desiree extended her hand. “Sit.”

  I took the seat across from her in a ladylike manner as Silke would. The walls and ceiling of her office were painted the deepest blue as if to complement her. Curlicues of metal supported the thick sheet of glass that was her desk. Myriad pillows of dark hues enriched the black leather of the chairs and couch.

  Before I could say anything, she did. “I assured you I would take care of Hung Chung.”