Bloodlinks

by Lee Killough

  “You’ve never asked why I go.”

  Pfannenstiel glanced sideways at him with a thoughtfulness that prickled Garreth’s neck. Then Pfannenstiel shrugged. “Not my business. And...here you are, home. Just leave the bag; I’ll dispose of it.”

  The car braked at Helen’s driveway...where Maggie’s Bronco with its SHE-PIG tag sat parked down in front of his side of the garage. A face peered between the drapes of the French doors onto the deck above the garage doors.

  Pfannenstiel gave him a thumbs up. “Good luck.”

  Garreth stared after the patrol car. Did Pfannenstiel know, or suspect, something about John Doe, just choose to let it alone? According to Nat Toews, thirty years in the department had taught Pfannenstiel, like Lieutenant Kaufman, his cousin, where all the bodies were buried. Maybe who they were, too? Or was Garreth Mikaelian still looking over his shoulder, as he had when Lane first turned him...always wary of pursuit.

  And speaking of wary. He glanced up at the French doors, waved at Maggie still peering out, and took a deep breath. Time to face the fire.

  The door jerked open as soon as he reached the landing. Maggie launched through it into his arms. “Thank god! I was so worried! When you didn’t come home I called the station and Doris said you’d seemed in a daze all night. What happened at that accident? Where did you go after you got off?”

  He barely heard her through the pulse pounding in his ears. The explosion of hunger in him at her blood scent brought back the taste of the girl’s blood and made him dizzy with craving. With Maggie’s neck so close to his mouth, his fangs started sliding down. In a surge of panic he almost thrust her away for her own protection.

  Instead, he made himself ease her loose and backward into the apartment and closed the door. “Look, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you. It’s just been a shitty day and I had to clear my head.”

  She frowned. “So why didn’t you come home? Isn’t that what we have each other for, to talk out the job stress?”

  How did he answer that? “I...yes...I wasn’t thinking.”

  After a moment, she nodded. “What you need is a shower to relax you, then we can talk.” She started unbuttoning his shirt.

  Panic surged in him again. Shower together, she meant, which almost always ended in soapy sex. Welcome any other time. But tonight he could not, dared not...terrified...certain...he would be unable to fight his usual urge to bite as they peaked.

  He backed away. “I’m sorry...tonight I’m not up to that.”

  After a moment she nodded and pointed at the couch, not yet unfolded into a bed. “So we’ll just talk.”

  No...he needed to keep his distance from her blood. Carefully, he said, “Maggie...I’m exhausted.” And hoped he looked it, with the sun rising and weight of daylight pressing on him.

  Maggie’s forehead furrowed. “You mean you don’t want to talk. Why don’t you ever want to talk?”

  He heard himself go defensive. “We talk all the time.”

  She shook her head. “No, mostly I talk. Unless it’s something ‘safe,’ like amusing war stories, books and movies, world events, maybe an anecdote about your childhood. But never anything like what happened tonight that turned you into a zombie on duty and sent you walking around town for over two hours before coming home. Then you dive behind a wall. What is it you’re so desperate to hide?”

  Garreth swallowed a groan. She was not going to let this go. Tell her something, then, anything that might satisfy her for tonight. The smell of her blood suggested a good lie.

  He sighed as though surrendering. “There’s nothing to hide. I just didn’t want to say anything because...the girl driving the car was wearing the same perfume Marti used to, and I smelled it on me the rest of the night.” Imagined he smelled it now, and the pang at the scent curling though his memory — Cinnabar? — reminded him that three years had not ended the wrench of losing his wife. “It was like dragging a ghost around. I had to walk it off, not bring that here to you.”

  Maggie eyed him bleakly. “I think the ghost came anyway.” She headed for the door. “I’ll let you go to bed.”

  Though he wanted her gone tonight, he wondered if he inadvertently pushed her too far. Which might be wise...break off the relationship. How could he ever risk sex again? And yet, she was bright, fun, good company...and a relationship that helped him still feel a little human. Could he afford to lose that?

  Chapter Eight

  He dreamed of fire. He stood in the shade of a tree at the edge of Pioneer Park’s island. High overhead a summer sun blazed in a heat-bleached sky. Lane lounged on the railing of the bandstand, a blood-red dance costume cut to her hip bones showing off her showgirl legs. Even in the shade her hair shone rich mahogany, and her eyes gleamed red as fire.

  “Come here to me, Inspector,” she crooned. “Blood son. Lover. I need you. We need each other.”

  “The hell I need you,” he yelled at her.

  He wanted to leave the island, but the wooden bridge to shore lay in the full blaze of the sun. Just looking at it made him feel weak. If only he could find his trooper glasses. Somehow he had mislaid them, though. He searched all his pockets in vain. Had Lane taken them?

  “But you do need me, lover,” she called. “You don’t want to be all alone.”

  “I’m not.”

  She laughed. “You’re referring to your little she-pig? Don’t be foolish. See that?” She pointed.

  Following the direction of her finger, he caught his breath. Maggie stood at the shore end of the bridge staring balefully at him. In her hand she held a box of kitchen matches. She struck one.

  “What are you doing?” he called.

  “You don’t want to talk to me? You prefer the ghost of your dead wife or communing at the grave of that psycho? Fine.” She tossed the match onto the bridge.

  “Maggie! Don’t!”

  “Prove it’s me you care about.” She watched the plank start to smolder. “Come stamp out the fire.”

  Garreth tried, but the moment he stepped into the sun, it struck like a sledgehammer. He reeled back, blinded by pain.

  She tossed another match. A second plank caught fire. “I don’t see what’s so difficult. There’s still time to walk over the bridge to me. Anyone can do that. Anyone human.”

  But Garreth could not. The sun held him pinned in the shade of the tree. He could only stand and watch helplessly while his link to the shore went up in flames.

  “You see, lover?” Deceptively soft arms wrapped around him from behind. Fangs nipped his ear. “You’re mine. I’m the only one who’ll have you. I’m the only one who understands. Now aren’t you sorry you killed me?”

  Chapter Nine

  Over the weekend Garreth wondered if he still had any kind of relationship with Maggie. When he saw her at the station Friday evening she smiled and spoke to him with just the politeness of colleagues.

  Lighting Sue Ann’s eyes with avid curiosity. She asked him nothing, however, and judging by her frowns, Maggie frustrated attempts at questioning, too.

  Remembering the burning bridge dream, he wondered if Maggie expected him to make the first move. If so, what? Asking might run him into the kind of trap his first wife Judith used to set. “What’s wrong?” “You know.” “No I don’t. Tell me.” “Well if you can’t figure it out, I’m not going to tell you.”

  So he met politeness with politeness, waiting for some sign what to do. At least Fowler had left town that day, he learned from Duncan...removing one source of tension.

  Then as he made his door-rattling tour of downtown Sunday night, Maggie’s Bronco rolled up the street and stopped opposite him. “Hi. How’s it going?”

  Going strangely. She had never done this before. He came over to the car. “I don’t know. How’s it going with you?”

  She took a deep breath. “Look...I’ve been thinking and...I’m sorry about the other night. It’s stupid to be jealous of Marti. Of course things are going to remind you of her. I need to accept that
. So if a situation like the other night comes up again, don’t feel you have to ‘shield’ me. Just tell me.”

  He nodded. “All right.”

  She relaxed. Her tone lightened. “If I get bent out of shape over it, give me a dope slap.”

  He raised a brow. “And get my arm broken? I don’t think so.”

  She grinned. “I do have an ulterior motive for apologizing now. I want to see that new Harrison Ford movie, Witness, playing in Bellamy and thought maybe, since you’re off tomorrow, you’d take me.”

  It was as good a way as any to put out the fire on the bridge. “I’d love to. I’ll pick you up at your place after your shift.”

  Chapter Ten

  The late show ended near midnight. They walked out of the theater into an overcast night chilly enough to show their breath. Garreth smelled spring in the breeze...damp earth and hints of green. Clean smells. He drank it in.

  “How did you like the movie?” Maggie gave him a sly smile. “Did coming to Baumen from the big city make you feel like John Book did landing in Amish country?”

  Little echoes, maybe, but... “Baumen’s just smaller than San Francisco, not a different culture.”

  The theater distracted him from any deeper resonance with Book...drowning him in blood scents that made his throat burn with craving. Someone had eaten Italian, too, the occasional whiff of garlic choking him. Several other scents carried the sour flavor of disease. Only burying his nose in a giant box of popcorn let him enjoy any of the movie, the smell of it and its double extra topping of butter helping block those other odors.

  Of course Maggie noticed he ate none of the popcorn. The first time he took her to a movie she asked why.

  “I don’t actually like popcorn,” he had told her.

  “Then why buy it?”

  “I like the smell.”

  That time she had stared at him. Now she just shook her head.

  They crossed the street to Courthouse Square, where he had parked in the courthouse lot. As he unlocked the ZX, a Jeep wagon with a sheriff’s star and a red-haired man at the wheel shot through the lot from the side street entrance and pulled a squealing turn around the far end of the Law Enforcement Center onto the ramp to the garage underneath.

  Maggie stared after him. “That was Tom Frey.”

  The undersheriff. In a big hurry.

  Garreth reached into the car for the portable radio tucked between the bucket seats...carried off-duty since last July at Danzig’s suggestion. Then a deputy caught in a rollover lived because an off-duty Russell PD officer, alerted to the situation by the scanner in his car, was able to respond long before official backup could reach the accident. Out here with officers often spread thin, they all needed to look after each other.

  Switching on the radio, though, found only silence. Garreth frowned. That could not be right if something serious happened. Which meant...

  Simultaneously he and Maggie said: “Tac 2.” A separate channel for tactical communication.

  As he switched channels, a voice said, “...turned north on 11th.”

  Another voice, an angry one, came on. “I’ll head the b — subject off!”

  The squeal of tires out of sight to the west, turning into the roar of an engine echoing through the underground garage, announced another hurried arrival. Something major was going down.

  Carrying the radio, Garreth and Maggie headed for the LEC’s front door.

  “Frey says just keep him in sight for now.” A familiar voice, Verlene Epps who dispatched after midnight.

  The sheriff and Bellamy police shared the LEC, with the front counter to the right, on the sheriff’s side. A placard beside the ticket-booth sized opening in the glass stretching from counter to ceiling bore an arrow pointing down to a button in the counter and the instructions: After midnight push Call button. Maggie pushed it.

  Audible from some speaker on the other side of the glass but not on Garreth’s radio, a male voice said: “I’m Undersheriff Tom Frey. Why don’t you tell me who you are and what you want so we can work something out where no one gets hurt.”

  A harsh laugh answered him. “After cold-cocking a cop and taking his gun? Riiiight. Fuck yourself.”

  Maggie’s brows shot up...matching the uh-oh! Garreth felt. The subject also obviously had a police radio.

  “Why don’t you at least release Emma?”

  And a hostage. Then the name registered. Emma? The Emma Carson who was the SO clerk that sometimes dispatched? He gave the button three long pushes.

  “The only way the bitch is going out of the car is with a bullet in her unless I’m damn sure no cop is following me.”

  A lanky woman with a distracted expression on her long face came around the partition screening the counter from the office. “May I help you?” Evening dispatcher Kitty Wells, still here. Garreth recognized her voice.

  “Maybe we can help you?” They held up their IDs, and the radio. “We’ve heard enough to know you have a hostage situation, so if you can use a car in the pursuit that doesn’t look like a patrol car, I’m driving a 280ZX.”

  The angry voice on Garreth’s radio said, “I don’t see him on 11th.”

  “Chief, can you come here!” she called around the partition.

  Moments later a man with a country club golf tan appeared. Police chief James Oldenburg, Garreth guessed. He eyed them and their IDs dubiously while Kitty talked at him...ran a hand through thinning hair.

  “Got him!” the angry voice said. “He went down the alley between Roosevelt and Tyler and tripped one of those motion sensor lights. Now he’s turning west on Tyler.”

  Frey said, “You parallel him on Roosevelt. Bellamy, 132, take McKinley. See if we can keep him on Tyler and run him into the high school parking lot. Then PIT him!”

  Oldenburg grunted in satisfaction. “That ought to take care of him...but thanks for your offer, officers.”

  “What happens to Emma when they PIT?” Kitty said.

  Oldenburg smiled grimly. “Gorham’s good at PITs. He’ll spin that car hard and fast and the bastard won’t have time to take his hands off the wheel before Wes Jamison’s there to stick a gun in his ear. He does have a score to settle, after all.”

  Jamison must be the assaulted officer.

  “Subject just turned south on 14th! He almost hit me!” Not the angry voice, so presumably 132, Officer Gorham.

  Oldenburg swore.

  The angry voice came on over the sound of squealing tires. “I’m on him!”

  The fugitive’s voice came over the regular channel. “You think you were being cute trying to run me into a dead end! Those headlights behind me better go away or I won’t bother shooting this cow. I’ll just floor this crate, open the door, and push out her out!”

  “Give him some room,” Frey said.

  “He’s turning west on Lincoln.”

  Oldenburg eyed Garreth through the glass, his hand going back through his hair again. “Do you know where Lincoln is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you catch up with 132?”

  “Oh yeah!”

  “Then...go!”

  He and Maggie ran.

  Peeling out of the parking lot, they passed a Bronco with a sheriff’s star wheeling in. No doubt the sheriff, who had to drive in from his farm. Once clear of the Bronco, Garreth raced south to Lincoln.

  On Tac 2, Frey said, “120, leave pursuit of the subject to 132. Make like Richard Petty out Lowe Road to reach 9 ahead of the subject and meet with Deputy Harris. 132, there’s a new player, officers Mikaelian and Lebekov from Baumen.”

  Garreth fishtailed around the corner, tires sliding but sticking enough to make the turn and not jump the far curb onto the Union Pacific tracks running through town. Then he stamped the accelerator.

  “They’re driving a 280ZX. Let them lead the pursuit so the subject will see them and not you.”

  “Are they going to try a PIT in a sports car?”

  “No,” Garreth had Maggie relay for him.
“When that chance comes, I’ll move aside and he’s all yours.”

  A patrol car loomed ahead. Garreth sped around it, letting Maggie salute the driver while he peered down the street for their quarry. There. He spotted tail lights, and moments later a streetlight revealed a light bar on the vehicle.

  Garreth slowed to match the other’s speed and hoped the kidnapper checked his rearview mirror often enough to see that same streetlight show a mere sports car behind him.

  “Any comment from the subject?” he had Maggie radio.

  “No,” Verlene said. “No new threats either.”

  So it seemed the kidnapper felt more comfortable. Comfortable indeed, Garreth reflected minutes later after a glance at his speedometer. Instead of flooring it, after Lincoln Avenue became County 9, he ran barely over the speed limit.

  Garreth reported that.

  The gravel voice of Sheriff Pfeifer came back, “Does it feel like he’s testing you, to see if you’ll pass him?”

  Garreth considered. “If I were doing that, I’d drop under the limit.”

  “So maybe he doesn’t know the road...or he’s looking for a way south to the Interstate,” a new voice said. Another officer. Maybe the deputy waiting down the road with 132 and a spike strip.

  Or maybe the kidnapper was testing him after all. Brake lights flared and swung sideways.

  “Duck, 132!” Maggie shouted into the radio. “He’s turned around and heading back our way!”

  In the rearview mirror Garreth saw the headlights behind him disappear. He himself could do nothing but keep going straight or give away the fact he was tailing the other vehicle. Once they passed each other, however, he took his foot off the gas and let the car slow while he watched the kidnapper’s vehicle in the rearview mirror. Waiting for an opportunity to turn around and resume pursuit without arousing suspicion.

  About a quarter mile back, the car suddenly turned off the highway.

  “Subject now headed south on 1120,” 132 reported.

  “Proof he don’t know the area,” someone said.