by J. R. Rain
My consciousness snapped back to the street, stunned.
I opened my eyes and, briefly confused, got my bearings. A scratching sound came from my right. I turned and saw the bright eyes of one of the rats. Watching me. He had inched a little closer.
I ignored the rat and did the only thing I could think of. My client wanted evidence. I would give her evidence. I didn’t have time to mess around with this case. I had other, more important cases. Bigger cases.
One and done, I thought. It was time to end this case.
I pulled out my iPhone once again, but this time I called Mrs. Shine.
Chapter Eight
We were in the alleyway.
Gertrude Shine was a heavy-set woman with swollen ankles, so swollen that the hem of her stretch pants were stretched to the limit. Her hair was indeed red and permed, and she was the spitting image of the woman I had seen in my thoughts.
Anyway, I felt horrible for bringing her out here, especially in her current condition, but people don’t pay me to tell them good news. They already know, in their hearts, that bad news is coming. I’m simply a facilitator of bad news, which is a shitty way of looking at my job. Or an aspect of my job, but there you have it. Had I more time, I would have waited around and tried to photograph the adoring couple as they left the building, ideally hand-in-hand, and no doubt with a long kiss goodbye. People generally don’t hump in public, and, by law, I can’t photograph through windows. Major invasion of privacy. So, catching a couple on a date, kissing in public, and generally acting lovie-dovie is the best any private eye can hope for. And it’s generally enough for most people.
Well, screw all that.
The woman was dying. Her husband was a snake, and I had bigger fish to fry.
“He’s in there?” asked Gertrude. She seemed to be having problems standing and she was definitely having problems breathing. I was worried for her, but she didn’t complain.
I nodded, and she set her jaw determinedly.
“With her?”
“And one other,” I said.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m confused,” she said.
“So am I,” I said.
Minutes earlier she had parked across the street, and I had led her back here to the alley behind the auto shop. Before us were two massive fold-up doors, so big they could have housed a dirigible. Lights flickered beyond the dirty windows. I heard voices, laughter. As far as I was aware, only three people were inside.
The back alley was similar in layout to Hero’s; meaning, the space behind the shop was also a small parking lot that bled into a much darker alley. If I hadn’t been so tough, I might have looked nervously down the alleys.
I was, and I didn’t.
The air was heavy and still. Mrs. Shine was sweating profusely and waving her hand in front of her face. It was time to get on with it.
“So, you have no idea who owns this building?” I asked.
“None.”
I went over to the first of the garage doors and studied it. Two big padlocks. I reached down and gripped the handle.
“But isn’t it locked?” asked Gertrude, stepping behind me.
I was feeling sassy and impatient and even small lies seemed a waste of time.
“Not anymore,” I said, and yanked hard on the handle. Both locks held tight, but I couldn’t say the same for the latches. They ripped apart and tumbled to the cracked concrete, even while I continued pulling up the rolling door.
Light spilled out.
Blinding light.
Behind me, Mrs. Shine gasped. I didn’t gasp, but my jaw did drop open.
Chapter Nine
Three people jumped in unison.
One of the guys who jumped was unfortunately working under what appeared to be a massive propeller. As he leaped, he slammed his head hard, instantly opening a gash along his hairline. Blood poured freely from his skull and he cursed. Before I could stop myself, I licked my lips.
“Jesus H. Christ!” he shouted, holding his head.
We seemed to have caught the young woman, who had been kneeling next to him, in the act of handing him a tool. Holding a wrench, she gasped and spun around. She was, of course, the baker’s assistant. Apparently, she was also a mechanic’s assistant, too.
The baker himself had been lying on a tarp and painting the hull of what I could see now was a good-sized boat. In his alarm, he had kicked over the can of paint which spilled across the tarp and over onto the oil-stained cement floor.
The young guy holding his bleeding head marched over to us, holding his wrench rather threateningly. I was still stunned, still soaking in the scene, still realizing I had made an egregious error.
So had Gertrude Shine.
The young man with the wrench said, “What the hell’s going on here?”
Blood had found its way between his fingers. I was too alarmed to pay much attention to it. Well, not too much. I did notice how the overhead lights reflected dully off it. Perfectly off it. He was looking around wildly, trying, no doubt, to figure out how we had gotten in. He walked briefly outside and saw his destroyed garage.
“What the fuck?”
I said nothing. There was nothing to say. Something like this could cost me my private investigator’s license. I hadn’t been thinking. I hadn’t been thinking for a few days now. Hell, even longer. After all, Orange County was being stalked by a sick son-of-a-bitch, and I had found myself in the thick of it.
But I couldn’t think about that now.
I blinked. Coming back to my senses. What had I done? Sure, I might have talked my way out of something like this, but it was impossible with Gertrude next to me. Her husband, CS Shine, came over to her, equally stunned. There was a big blotch of cream-colored paint on his hip where the pail had been knocked over and washed over him.
“Trudy?” he said, looking from her, to me, to the broken door, to his bleeding mechanic friend. “Trudy, what’s going on?”
I looked at her and saw that she was crying, holding her hands over her face. She was looking up at the stern, the back of the boat where the massive propeller was mounted. Although most of the boat was covered in a blue tarp, the stern was exposed, perhaps so the mechanic could have a go at the engine. Painted in fancy black script above the propeller were the words “Gertrude Forever.”
“I don’t understand,” she said, but she was crying so of course she understood. Perfectly.
He smiled at her patiently, and I saw the love radiating from him. Literally. I could see the warm, violet waves emanating from the light field that surrounded him, reaching out to her. “You always wanted to travel the world, honey, and now we can. We’ve been overhauling it. Al, Becky’s boyfriend, has been letting me use his shop and helping me rebuild the engine.”
She buried her face in her hands. “I thought you were...” But she couldn’t finish her words.
“Having an affair?”
He smiled warmly, and instead of defending himself or laughing off her insecurity, Mr. CS Shine went over to his wife and gave her a big, smothering hug, and I heard the intimate words he whispered softly into her ear, “Ah, my sweetheart. Don’t you know by now you’re my precious girl?”
“I’m so sorry—”
But he shushed her and held her, and his words hit me hard. I fought my own tears and mostly won.
Just then the young mechanic appeared in front of me. “Someone’s paying for my door and for this.” He pointed to the gash in his forehead.
I told him I would. I told him I would do anything he needed. I gave him my card and he nodded, and I could see the questioning look in his eyes, even though he didn’t voice his thoughts:
How the hell had we broken his door?
But I only smiled weakly at him, told him to send me any bills. Mr. and Mrs. Shine were pressed tightly in each other’s arms and the mechanic bled into a dew rag pressed tightly to his head.
Okay, I conceded. Some men weren’t assholes.
Some men were angels.
I slipped away from the embracing couple. Into the night. Where I belonged.
The End
Deleted Scene #1 from:
Vampire Moon
Chapter Forty-one
I landed on the hospital roof.
A moment later, closing my eyes and seeing myself in my human form, I found myself standing naked, high above the prison below. As usual, I didn’t feel myself transform. It just happened, and it happened instantly and painlessly. A true metamorphosis.
Feeling vulnerable—being naked does that to you—I trotted over to a door, the roof’s access point. The doorknob was locked, so locked that it didn’t even jiggle. I gripped the knob again and turned with a little added strength. With a groan, the mechanisms in the lock snapped apart and I pulled the door open.
The dark stairwell was lit by only a dusty, mesh-covered lightbulb. I moved quickly down the metal staircase, padding lightly on bare feet, careful not touch anything.
I paused at the third floor, the prison hospital’s ICU. Although I hadn’t worked long as a federal agent for HUD, I had certainly worked long enough to get acquainted with most of the local prisons. More than a few times, I interviewed prisoners. And one or two times I had even interviewed prisoners in this very hospital.
Granted, I had never done so stark naked in the middle of the night.
Tonight, though, it wasn’t going to be an interview.
The door onto the floor wasn’t locked. As is the case for many prison hospitals, the building wasn’t quite as tight as the prison itself, which accounted for why most prison break-outs occurred here, in the hospitals.
It was late, and the hospital should be quiet. There would be plenty of guards, certainly, at least one in each room, and definitely a few on each floor. There would also be plenty of cameras, too.
Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about cameras.
I stood behind the metal door, away from the glass window, and listened. A few seconds of this later, and I was certain there was no one outside the door, or anywhere close, for that matter. Not to mention, my sixth sense would have alerted me to danger. I think. I hoped so, at least.
Anyway, all of my senses, both physical and non-physical, were telling me the coast was clear. So I used my middle knuckle to gently push down on the lever, and used my shoulder to push open the door. I may be a vampire, but I still had prints.
I peaked out into the hallway.
* * *
You want surreal? Try standing in a prison hospital hallway naked.
Above me, yes, was a camera. I knew from experience that I would not show up on film, either digital or celluloid. But I do very much show up live and in person and so I kept an eye out for anything living. So far, I was alone. To either side of me were elevators. To my left was a sort of cage that I think might have been the pharmacy. To my right was a long corridor that led to some activity and brighter lights.
I slipped down the hall, as naked as the day I was born.
There was what appeared to be a nurse’s station at the far end of the hallway. I could see a security guard leaning against the wall directly ahead of me. If he would look to his left he would see a very naked vampire.
I did my best to keep to the shadows and that’s when I found what I was looking for. It was a storage room. The door was locked. I took care of that with a quick twist of my wrist. I slipped inside and flicked on the light. It was, in fact, a big storage room, filled with shelves of everything from cleaning agents to nursing smocks. It was the smocks that I was after.
In a blink, I was wearing one. A baggy one, granted, but it would do the trick. I also grabbed a rag which I sprayed with disinfectant. Vampires could still leave fingerprints, unfortunately.
I exited the storage room and looked for my next target.
I found it easily enough.
It was a fire alarm near a door a few yards away. With my hand wrapped in the rag, I yanked down on it hard, and the building erupted nicely into chaos.
Chapter Forty-three
Most of the armed guards had stepped out of the room and were conferring with each other. Many were on radios. The alarm screamed, rattling the old building. Doctors and nurses were running to and fro.
One nurse wasn’t running. One nurse was methodically checking each of the rooms until she found the one she wanted. No one noticed me or cared. I was just another nurse checking on her precious wards. Except this nurse had anything but benediction on her mind.
Ira Levin had a room to himself. It even looked like he had a view. Granted, it wasn’t much of a view. More of a dirty, mesh-covered window set high on the wall, barely big enough to shoot arrows from had this been a medieval fortress instead. Still, the small window would have afforded sunlight, and when one is on Death Row, even sunlight is a rare luxury.
Ira was awake and looking around, blinking. No doubt he had been asleep just moments earlier. His face, I saw, was still mostly bandaged. Even from here, looking through the door, I could see the dozens of dark stitches that criss-crossed the sections of his face that weren’t covered in bandages.
The guard barely looked at me. He was a big guy with a heavily muscles chest. At least, it was heavily muscled in my imagination. I slipped inside and he barely looked at me.
I kept my face turned away from Ira as I walked around his head, pretending to examine some equipment.
“Hey, babe,” he said. “What’s going on? We got some kind of fire.”
“Something like that,” I said. I was next to his bed, looking away, running my hands over some tubes. I could feel his eyes on me.
“You guys gonna get me out of here or something?”
“Or something,” I said. My heart, which generally beat slowly and deliberately, pushing my supernatural blood throughout my undead body, had picked up. I heard it pounding in my ears.
I would love to tell you that my heart picked up because I was nervous. Because I was about to do something I had never done before. I would like tot ell you that what I was about to do caused me so much guilt and regret that I nearly turned back.
I would like to. But I can’t.
The truth is, I was more excited than I had been in a long, long time. Something was coming over me. Something raw and primal, something alive and dark. And it pushed me forward recklessly.
I could see the guard clearly through the window. He was supposed to stand in the prisoner’s room at all times. But apparently that all changed when the fire alarm sounded. Now he was out in the hall, hand on his weapon, apparently waiting for orders. He glanced inside at me and I made sure to look busy. He looked away again as his walkie-talkie crackled. As he unclipped it and spoke into it, I turned around quickly and faced Ira Levin.
He had been looking out the window, at the guard, but now he looked back at me. His face was heavily bruised and misshapen. He looked very little like the man who had taunted me a week earlier. His eyes seemed slightly glazed. No doubt he was on a lot of pain killers, not to mention he had just been roused no doubt from a deep sleep.
He seemed about to ask me something pedestrian—perhaps if I could get him some water, or help him relieve his bowels—but then something crossed his damaged and battered face. More accurately, it crossed his eyes. That something was recognition.
“You!” he started to say.
I don’t think he even finished the word. I lunged forward and clapped my hand over his mouth, careful not to let him bite me. Next, I pulled the pillow out from behind his head, and in one swift motion replaced my hand with the pillow, covering his face completely.
I looked out the window. The guard was still on the walkie-talkie. A nurse ran by. Another guard ran by. The sirens continued to wail.
Ira kicked and fought me. I put my weight on him, binding his arms to his side, careful that nothing flailing could scratch me and inadvertently collect any evidence.
My head was pounding. My own blood was veritably surging through me. I
had an image of a lioness pinning down a gazelle, her ferocious jaws clamped around her prey’s throat, catching her breath even while she waited for her meal to perish.
My stomach growled ridiculously loud. I fought an overwhelming desire to rip out his throat and drink his foul blood. I fought and fought and fought the feeling. A dozen different times I nearly gave in. A dozen different times I reminded myself that Ira absolutely must appear to have died naturally.
Finally the kicking stopped. His body convulsed beneath me a half dozen times. As it did so, I watched the guard. He was still talking heatedly into the walkie-talkie, glancing left and right, but never in the room.
I lay on Ira’s body as his life left him. In the moment that it did, it sort of sagged and deflated and the energy in the room instantly dissipated. I was clearly alone with a corpse.
